Women Destroy Science Fiction!: Lightspeed Magazine Special Issue; The Stories

Christie Yant is a science fiction and fantasy writer, and assistant editor for Lightspeed magazine. Her fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and China’s Science Fiction World. Her work has also been longlisted for storySouth’s Million Writers Award. Christie lives on the central coast of California with two writers, an editor, and assorted four-legged nuisances.

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex and Locus Award-winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. In 2022 she managed the same feat, again!

N. K. Jemisin is a Brooklyn author who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, and RT Reviewers' Choice awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times, and you can find her online at nkjemisin.com.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy, along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

Tananarive Due (tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo) is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She is an executive producer on Shudder's groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. Her books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. She is married to author Steven Barnes, with whom she collaborates on screenplays. They live with their son, Jason.

Maria Dahvana Headley is a New York Times bestselling novelist, memoirist, and editor, most recently of Magonia, Queen of Kings, and the anthology Unnatural Creatures (coeditor with Neil Gaiman). Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards. She lives in Brooklyn in an apartment with a seven-foot stuffed crocodile and constellations on the ceiling. You can find her at www.mariadahvanaheadley.com

Others, as in, not you

Cassandra Campbell has recorded over one hundred audiobooks and directed many more. She has received eight Earphone Awards and has been nominated for an Audie Award. As an actress and director, she has worked off Broadway and in regional theaters across the country, as well as doing voice work on numerous commercials and films.

Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo award nine times, the Nebula award three times, the Bram Stoker award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.

Grover Gardner has recorded more than 650 audiobooks since beginning his career in 1981. He's been named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" as well as a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine. Gardner has garnered over 20 AudioFile Earphones Awards and is the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist. In 2005, Publishers Weekly deemed him "Audiobook Narrator of the Year." Gardner has also narrated hundreds of audiobooks under the names Tom Parker and Alexander Adams. Among his many titles are Marcus Sakey's At the City's Edge, as well as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Gardner studied Theater and Art History at Rollins College and received a Master's degree in Acting from George Washington University. He lives in Oregon with his significant other and daughter.

Jamye Méri Grant attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas, where she was a Presidential Scholar and the recipient of the prestigious YoungArts award. She studied theater arts at Pepperdine University and has acted in numerous theater performances, as well as in film and television.

Along with a diverse career on stage and screen, Susan Hanfield is a prolific audiobook narrator with hundreds of titles to her credit. Susan is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner, three-time Audie Award finalist, and a Voice Arts Awards nominee. From her professional studio in Los Angeles, Susan's favorite fiction genres include literary fiction, historical romance, young adult, and science fiction/fantasy. Nonfiction genres include faith-based/inspirational, personal self-development, and business. Susan is known for her wide range of voices, accents, intonations, and her ability to bring the written story to life.

Jonathan L. Howard is a game designer, scriptwriter, and a veteran of the computer game industry since the early 1990s, with titles such as the Broken Sword series to his credit. He is author of the Johannes Cabal series, as well as the YA novels Katya’s World and Katya’s War. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter.

John Allen Nelson ’s critically acclaimed roles on television’s 24 and Vanished are among the highlights of his twenty-five-plus years as an actor, screenwriter, and film producer. As a narrator, he won an AudioFile Earphones Award for his reading of Zoo Story by Thomas French.

Bahni Turpin is an experienced audiobook narrator and actress who has appeared in numerous television productions as well as films. An ensemble member of the Cornerstone Theater Company, she also works as a yoga instructor. She currently resides in Los Angeles, where she founded the SoLA Food Co-op.

Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.

Judy Young is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.