Stroll with the Stars – Sunday, The Tall Ship

Lauren Beukes is the award-winning South African author of six novels, a short story collection and NYT-best-selling graphic novels, including Zoo City which won the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle, The Shining Girls, now a major AppleTV show with Elisabeth Moss, and, most recently, the reality-bending mother-daughter-dreamworm novel, Bridge. Her work has been translated into 25 languages and she’s also worked in kids animation, TV scriptwriting and directed an award-winning documentary.

Fatima Taqvi is a Pakistani writer of fantasy and horror. She is a graduate of Clarion West 2023 and has words in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and Strange Horizons. She was shortlisted for the Future Worlds Prize in 2021 and was a finalist for the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction in 2019. She has forthcoming work in OwlCrate anthology “Monsters in Masquerade” and Apex Book Company’s “Map of Lost Places.”

GEOFF RYMAN’s work has won numerous awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award first place, the Arthur C. Clarke Award (twice for The Child Garden and for Air), the James W Tiptree Memorial Award (for Air), the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award (for 253), the British Science Fiction Association Award (three times, once for the series of interviews with African writers and the Canadian Sunburst Award (twice for Air a volume of short stories, Paradise Tales. In 2012 he won a Nebula Award for his Nigeria-set novelette ‘What We Found’. In December of 2023 his novel HIM was published and made both the Financial Times and The Guardian’s lists of the five best SFF novels of the year. HIH was shortlisted for a BSFA Award for Best Novel. Geoff was originally from Canada and has lived since 1973 in the UK.

Dr. Geoffrey A. Landis is a science-fiction writer and a scientist. He has won the Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction, and is the author of the novel Mars Crossing and collection Impact Parameter (& Other Quantum Realities). He works for NASA on developing advanced technologies for spaceflight. He was a member of the Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rovers Science teams, and most recently working on a mission to return a sample from the surface of Venus as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts project. He is also known for work on concepts for interstellar flight. In his spare time, he goes to fencing tournaments to stab strangers with a sword.  More information about him can be found at his somewhat-outdated web page: http://www.geoffreylandis.com/, or on Wikipedia.

Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL) is the internationally celebrated author of over 20 novels, including CHOCOLAT, (which became a movie in 2001), THE GOSPEL OF LOKI, HONEYCOMB and most recently, THE MOONLIGHT MARKET. She writes in various genres, from folklore to horror, Gothic and literary fiction, and has won numerous UK and international awards. She lives in Yorkshire, performs in the band she first formed when she was 16, and works from a shed in her garden.

Khan Wong has a past as a poet, cellist, arts funder and internationally known hula hooper. His debut novel, The Circus Infinite, was published by Angry Robot Books in 2022. It was longlisted for the BSFA Best Novel category, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His next novel, Down in the Sea of Angels, will be published by Angry Robot in 2025.

M. Darusha Wehm is the Nebula Award-nominated and Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning author of the interactive fiction game The Martian Job, as well as over a dozen novels including the Andersson Dexter cyberpunk detective series and the humorous coming-of-age novel The Home for Wayward Parrots. Darusha is a member of the Many Worlds writing collective and their short fiction and poetry have appeared in many venues, including Strange Horizons, Terraform and Nature. Their poetry has been a finalist for the Rhysling Award. Originally from Canada, Darusha lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand after several years sailing the Pacific.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, Ghost Talkers, The Glamourist Histories series, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and a four-time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, lives in Tennessee. Visit at maryrobinettekowal.com.

Minerva Cerridwen (xe or she) is a neurodiverse genderqueer aromantic asexual author from Belgium. Xe enjoys baking, drawing, and learning languages. Xyr queer fairy tale novella THE DRAGON OF YNYS came out with Atthis Arts in 2020. Find more information about Minerva’s writing on xyr website: https://minervacerridwen.wordpress.com/

Ng Yi-Sheng (he/him) is a Singaporean writer, researcher and translator with a keen interest in Southeast Asian history and myth.

He is the author of the speculative fiction collection Lion City (winner of the Singapore Book Award for Best Literary Work 2019 and the Singapore Literature Prize 2020). His creative works have been published in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons and Best of World SF Vol 1. His essays include “A Spicepunk Manifesto: Towards a Critical Movement of Southeast Asian-Inspired SFF”, “A History of Singapore Horror” and “A Not-So-Swiftly Tilting Planet: Global Inequities in SFF Publishing.”

Additionally, he served as editor of A Mosque in the Jungle: Classic Ghost Stories by Othman Wok and Wok and EXHALE: an Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices. He has spoken at numerous festivals, including the Singapore Writers Festival, the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Wordstorm Darwn and Flights of Foundry.

Paolo Bacigalupi is the internationally bestselling author of THE WINDUP GIRL, SHIP BREAKER, and THE WATER KNIFE, among others. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Michael L. Printz Awards, and was a National Book Award Finalist. His latest book is NAVOLA, an epic fantasy set in an Italian Renaissance-inspired world.

Paul Weimer is not really a Prince of Amber. He is a photographer, SFF reviewer, writer, critic, and podcaster. He lives in a city between St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota and continually dreams of his next photographic adventure. He can best be found on the internet under the name @princejvstin.

Pepper likes science, cats, and conventions.

RJ Barker is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of fantasy fiction. He won the 2020 British Fantasy Society (BFS) Robert Holdstock award for Best Novel for his fourth novel, The Bone Ships.

His debut trilogy The Wounded Kingdom (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins and King of Assassins) was nominated for the David Gemmel Award, the Kitschie Golden Tentacle, The Compton Crook and the BFS Best Debut and Best Novel awards. It was called ‘Thoroughly entertaining and constantly impressive’ by the Fantasy Hive, ‘One of the best fantasy series you will ever read’ by the BFS, and ‘A singular sensational new voice in epic fantasy’ by Kings of the Wyld author Nicholas Eames.

He followed this with the award-winning Tide Child Trilogy: The Bone Ships, Call of the Bone Ships and The Bone Ships Wake. These books have been hailed as ‘One of the most interesting and original fantasy worlds I’ve seen in years; by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and ‘Brilliant’ by Robin Hobb, alongside rave reviews in Starburst, SFX, and a starred review in Bookslist: ‘A unique and memorable world – harsh and brutal and full of fully realized, powerful female characters. Barker has managed to craft a story inspired by Moby Dick, Game of Thrones, and pirate lore, and readers will be drawn in and fascinated.’

His next series, The Forsaken Trilogy, is set within the bounds of a forest straight out of darkest folklore – with outlaws fighting an evil empire and warring deities. The first book, Gods of the Wyrdwood, was published in 2023 by Orbit.

RJ lives in Leeds with his wife, son and a collection of questionable taxidermy, odd art, scary music and more books than they have room for. He grew up reading whatever he could get his hands on, and has always been ‘that one with the book in his pocket.’ Having played in rock bands before deciding he was a rubbish musician, RJ returned to his first love, fiction.

Victor Manibo is a Filipino novelist living in New York. As a queer immigrant and a person of color, he writes about people who live these identities as they navigate imaginary worlds. A 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, he is the author of the science fiction novels THE SLEEPLESS and ESCAPE VELOCITY from Erewhon Books. Aside from fiction, he also spins fantastical tales in his career as a lawyer. He lives in Queens with his husband, their dog, and their two cats. Find him online at victormanibo.com and on most social media platforms @victormanibo.

SJ Groenewegen wrote the novels The Disinformation War (GoldSF, 2023), Lethbridge-Stewart: A Most Haunted Man (Candy Jar, 2022), and Lethbridge-Stewart: Daughters of Earth (Candy Jar, 2017). SJ also wrote the Black Archive on Doctor Who’s Face the Raven, as well as numerous essays on Doctor Who, SFF, gaming, and being queer. SJ’s short fiction has won awards (Scarlet Stiletto in 2002), appeared in Big Finish’s Doctor Who Short Trips range, the Lethbridge-Stewart Havoc Files collections and UNIT anthologies. In 2016, SJ was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to law enforcement and LGBTQIA diversity. SJ is a committee member of the Society of Authors in Scotland.

Yaroslav Barsukov is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and everything in between. He’s best known for his science fantasy noir novella Tower of Mud and Straw, which became an Amazon bestseller, was shortlisted for the prestigious Nebula Award as well as the SCKA Award, and received a Kirkus Star, eventually landing on Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Books of 2021” list. He’s a full member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) and combines his writing duties with volunteer work, serving as chair of SFWA’s Information Systems Committee.

Adri Joy is a critic and senior co-editor at the Hugo and Ignyte-winning online fanzine nerds of a feather, flock together, which publishes daily reviews, interviews, roundtables and analysis of all things nerd culture. She also writes for Strange Horizons and has been published in the British Fantasy Society journal. She is a regular jurist for the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards, a blogger-led award recognising excellent books without taking itself too seriously. She also finds time for her day job supporting democracy and rule of law worldwide, scuba diving with interesting wildlife, and providing emotional support to her elderly whippet.