Rich Horton - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

Chris Lawsonis an Australian speculative fiction writer with an eclectic approach to subject matter that has skittered across the hard sciences of genetic engineering and epidemiology, unapologetic fantasy about the voyages of the Argo at the end of the Age of Myths, and ambiguous-ghost stories set in the Great War. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Eidolon, Dreaming Down-Under, and several Year’s Best anthologies; his collection Written in Blood is available through MirrorDanse Books ( www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse). In non-fictional life, Chris is a family medicine practitioner and university teacher with a special interest in public health, evidence-based medicine, and statistics. He lives on the Sunshine Coast with his spouse, two children, and a hyperdog. Chris blogs, irregularly, at Talking Squid ( www.talkingsquid.net).

Kelly Linkis the author of three collections of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (“Because you can’t go through it.”) Link and her family live in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they started the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Margo Lanaganis a four-time World Fantasy Award winner, for novel, novella, collection and short story. Her stories have twice been short-listed in the James Tiptree Jr and Shirley Jackson awards, as well as for Hugo, Nebula, Stoker, Sturgeon and International Horror Guild awards. She is the author of four collections of short stories, White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes and Yellowcake, and two novels, Tender Morsels and The Brides of Rollrock Island. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia.

Nina Allan’s stories have appeared regularly in the magazines Black Static and Interzone, and have featured in the anthologies Catastrophia, House of Fear, Strange Tales from Tartarus, Best Horror of the Year #2 and Year’s Best SF #28. A first collection of her fiction, A Thread of Truth, was published by Eibonvale Press in 2007, followed by her story cycle The Silver Wind in 2011. Twice shortlisted for the BFS and BSFA Award, Nina’s next book, Stardust, will be available from PS Publishing in Autumn 2012. An exile from London, she lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex.

Kat Howard’s short fiction has appeared in Subterranean, Lightspeed, and Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, among other places. She’s a graduate of Clarion 2008 (UCSD), and teaches speculative fiction when she’s not writing it.

Born in Vermont and raised all over the place, K.J. Parkerhas worked as, among other things, a tax lawyer, an auction house porter, a forester and a numismatist. Married to a lawyer and settled in southern England, Parker is currently a writer, farm labourer and metalworker, in more or less that order. K.J. Parker is not K.J. Parker’s real name, but if somebody told you K.J. Parker’s real name, you wouldn’t recognise it.

Robert Reedis the author of several novels and a small empire of short fiction. His novella, “A Billion Eves,” won the Hugo. Reed lives in Lincoln, NE with his wife and daughter, and his new best friend, a NOOK Tablet.

George Saunders,a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, is the author of six books (including the short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation ) and, most recently, the essay collection The Braindead Megaphone. He teaches at Syracuse University.

C.S.E. Cooneycollects knives and books. Her fiction and poetry can be found in SteamPowered II and the Clockwork Phoenix 3 anthologies, at Apex, Subterranean, Strange Horizons, Podcastle, Goblin Fruit, and Mythic Delirium. Her book Jack o’ the Hills came out with Papaveria Press in 2011, which will also put out her poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes in 2012. She was the recipient of the 2011 Rhysling Award in the Long Poem category. All the women in her family have dark eyes.

Marissa Lingenis a freelance writer of over eighty short works of science fiction and fantasy. She lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog.

Rachel Swirskyholds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Subterranean Magazine. She’s been nominated for the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award, and in 2011 she won the Nebula Award for best novella. She hasn’t ever written a bucket list, but if she had, she probably wouldn’t have accomplished most of the stuff on it. (For instance, she has never starred on Broadway. What’s that about?)

Lavie Tidhargrew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has since lived in South Africa, the UK, Vanuatu and Laos. He is the author of the ground-breaking alternative history novel Osama (a BSFA Award nominee), and of the Bookman Histories trilogy of steampunk novels comprising The Bookman, Camera Obscura and The Great Game. Lavie’s other works include linked story collection HebrewPunk, novellas Cloud Permutations, Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God, An Occupation of Angels and Jesus & The Eightfold Path. He edited The Apex Book of World SF and was a World Fantasy Award nominee for his work on the World SF Blog.

E. Lily Yuis a senior in English at Princeton University working toward a certificate in biophysics. Her short stories and poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Clarkesworld, Jabberwocky 5 Electric Velocipede, and Goblin Fruit, and her short play on beta decay had a staged reading at Princeton in October. At school, she competes on the ballroom team, plays flute, and juggles. She was born in Oregon and raised in New Jersey.

Since her first sale in 1987, Kij Johnsonhas sold dozens of short stories to markets including Amazing Stories, Analog, Asimov’s, Duelist Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy. She has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short story and the 2001 Crawford Award for best new fantasy novelist. Her short story “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” was a nominee for the 2008 Nebula and Hugo awards. Her novels include two volumes of the Heian trilogy Love/War/Death: The Fox Woman and Fudoki. She’s also co-written with Greg Cox a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Dragon’s Honor. She is currently researching a third novel set in Heian Japan; and Kylen, two novels set in Georgian Britain.

Charlie Jane Anders, “Six Months, Three Days” ( Tor.com )

M.T. Anderson, “Oracle Engine” ( Steampunk!)

Eleanor Arnason, “My Husband Steinn” ( Asimov’s, 10-11/11)

Kage Baker, “Attlee and the Long Walk” ( Life on Mars)

John Barnes, “The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees” ( Engineering Infinity)

Christopher Barzak, “Smoke City” ( Asimov’s, 4-5/11)

Stephen Baxter, “The Invasion of Venus” ( Engineering Infinity)