May 3 – 5, 2024 Holiday Inn Piscataway, NJ

Guests of Honor

Neil Clarke

Neil Clarke is best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine. Launched in October 2006, the online magazine has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once). Neil is also an eleven-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor-Short Form (winning once), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and recipient of the 2019 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award from SFWA. In the seventeen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, stories that he has edited have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, Stoker, and various other awards.

In 2012, Neil suffered a near-fatal heart attack while attending Readercon in Burlington, MA. The damage sustained in this incident later required that he undergo surgery for the implantation of a defibrillator. These events inspired both Upgraded, his 2014 cyborg anthology and his 2017 jump from his day job in academia (technology) to become a full-time editor.

Additionally, Neil edits Forever—a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His latest anthology, New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction (co-edited with Xia Jia and Regina Kanyu Wang), was published in July.

He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

Neil Clarke

Neil Clarke is best known as the editor and publisher of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine. Launched in October 2006, the online magazine has been a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine four times (winning three times), the World Fantasy Award four times (winning once), and the British Fantasy Award once (winning once). Neil is also an eleven-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Editor-Short Form (winning once), three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director, and recipient of the 2019 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award from SFWA. In the seventeen years since Clarkesworld Magazine launched, stories that he has edited have been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, WSFA Small Press, Stoker, and various other awards.

In 2012, Neil suffered a near-fatal heart attack while attending Readercon in Burlington, MA. The damage sustained in this incident later required that he undergo surgery for the implantation of a defibrillator. These events inspired both Upgraded, his 2014 cyborg anthology and his 2017 jump from his day job in academia (technology) to become a full-time editor.

Additionally, Neil edits Forever—a digital-only, reprint science fiction magazine launched in 2015. His anthologies include: Upgraded, Galactic Empires, Touchable Unreality, More Human than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His latest anthology, New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction (co-edited with Xia Jia and Regina Kanyu Wang), was published in July.

He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons.

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C .S. E. Cooney

C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a World Fantasy Award-winning author. Her books include Saint Death’s Daughter (on Kirkus Review’s list of Year’s Science Fiction and Best Fantasy 2022), Dark Breakers, Desdemona and the Deep, and Bone Swans: Stories, as well as the poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes, which includes her Rhysling Award-winning poem “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”

Look for her standalone novel The Twice-Drowned Saint (previously found in the anthology A Sinister Quartet) to be released in early 2023 from Mythic Delirium.

In her guise as a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, as well as short fiction for podcasts such as Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Podcastle. As the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, she crowdfunded for two EPs: Alecto! Alecto! and The Headless Bride, and produced one album, Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir.

Her plays have been performed in several countries, and her short fiction and poetry can be found in many speculative fiction magazines and anthologies, most recently: “A Minnow or Perhaps a Colossal Squid,” in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 1, “Snowed In,” in Bridge To Elsewhere, and “Megaton Comics Proudly Presents: Cap and Mia, Episode One: “Captain Comeback Saves the Day!” in The Sunday Morning Transport—all in collaboration with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez.

Forthcoming soon from Outland Entertainment is a table-top roleplaying game co-designed by Cooney and Hernandez called Negocios Infernales.

Find her here at csecooney.com, on LinkTree, at @csecooney on Twitter and IG, on Facebook at facebook.com/cscooney, on her Amazon Author Page, or at Goodreads.

C .S. E. Cooney

C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a World Fantasy Award-winning author. Her books include Saint Death’s Daughter (on Kirkus Review’s list of Year’s Science Fiction and Best Fantasy 2022), Dark Breakers, Desdemona and the Deep, and Bone Swans: Stories, as well as the poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes, which includes her Rhysling Award-winning poem “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”

Look for her standalone novel The Twice-Drowned Saint (previously found in the anthology A Sinister Quartet) to be released in early 2023 from Mythic Delirium.

In her guise as a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, as well as short fiction for podcasts such as Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Podcastle. As the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, she crowdfunded for two EPs: Alecto! Alecto! and The Headless Bride, and produced one album, Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir.

Her plays have been performed in several countries, and her short fiction and poetry can be found in many speculative fiction magazines and anthologies, most recently: “A Minnow or Perhaps a Colossal Squid,” in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Fantasy Volume 1, “Snowed In,” in Bridge To Elsewhere, and “Megaton Comics Proudly Presents: Cap and Mia, Episode One: “Captain Comeback Saves the Day!” in The Sunday Morning Transport—all in collaboration with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez.

Forthcoming soon from Outland Entertainment is a table-top roleplaying game co-designed by Cooney and Hernandez called Negocios Infernales.

Find her here at csecooney.com, on LinkTree, at @csecooney on Twitter and IG, on Facebook at facebook.com/cscooney, on her Amazon Author Page, or at Goodreads.

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Carlos Hernandez

New York Times best-selling author Carlos Hernandez wrote the critically acclaimed short story collection The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria (Rosarium, 2016), the novel Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (Disney Hyperion, 2019), which won the 2020 Pura Belpré Award, and its sequel, Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe. He’s also written dozens of short stories, poems, and works of drama, usually in the SFF mode.

Carlos earned his Ph. D. in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, from Binghamton University in 2000. As well as a Visiting Professor of English at Western Colorado University, he is Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC.

At the CUNY Graduate Center, Carlos teaches in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, which has led him to work extensively game writing and game design.

He has served as lead writer and a game designer on the CRPG Meriwether, as a writer and designer for the installation art of Mary Miss, and as literary curator on the Apple Arcade game Dear Reader, among other video games. As a co-founder of the CUNY Games Network and of the Board Game Designers Group of New York, he’s contributed to the development of many board and card games, both educational and commercial.

Currently, he and his wife, author C. S. E. Cooney, are completing work on their GM-less roleplaying game Negocios Infernales, which will be published by Outland Entertainment. You can find Carlos on Twitter @writeteachplay.

Carlos Hernandez

New York Times best-selling author Carlos Hernandez wrote the critically acclaimed short story collection The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria (Rosarium, 2016), the novel Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (Disney Hyperion, 2019), which won the 2020 Pura Belpré Award, and its sequel, Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe. He’s also written dozens of short stories, poems, and works of drama, usually in the SFF mode.

Carlos earned his Ph. D. in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, from Binghamton University in 2000. As well as a Visiting Professor of English at Western Colorado University, he is Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC.

At the CUNY Graduate Center, Carlos teaches in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, which has led him to work extensively game writing and game design.

He has served as lead writer and a game designer on the CRPG Meriwether, as a writer and designer for the installation art of Mary Miss, and as literary curator on the Apple Arcade game Dear Reader, among other video games. As a co-founder of the CUNY Games Network and of the Board Game Designers Group of New York, he’s contributed to the development of many board and card games, both educational and commercial.

Currently, he and his wife, author C. S. E. Cooney, are completing work on their GM-less roleplaying game Negocios Infernales, which will be published by Outland Entertainment. You can find Carlos on Twitter @writeteachplay.

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