THE BOARD
Lauren Beukes
Lauren Beukes is a recovering journalist, TV scriptwriter, award-winning columnist and writer (aka glorified typist). She’s the author of the muti noir, Zoo City released in 2010 and the dystopian thriller Moxyland (2008) which William Gibson describes as “very, *very* good.” Her previous book, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past, a rollicking collection of biographies of real-life renegades and raconteurs, was nominated for the 2006 Alan Paton non-fiction award. Her short stories have been published in various anthologies, including Home Away: 24 Hours. 24 Writers. 24 Places, Touch: Stories of Contact, Open, FAB, African Road: New Writing from Southern Africa, 180 Degrees, Urban 03 and Novel Idea. She’s the fiction editor of Chew the Magazine, a design, art, photography, pop culture digital magazine. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT, but she got her real education from 12 years of freelance journalism. Writing for the likes of the Sunday Times, Colors, The Hollywood Reporter, Nature Medicine, Marie Claire, and The Big Issue, among others, she picked up really useful life-skills like sky-diving, pole-dancing and brewing mqombothi. Journalism also allowed her to hang out with AIDS activists, township vigilantes, electricity thieves, homeless sex workers, teen vampires, reluctant basejumpers and other interesting folk. She lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter.
Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard was born in the US, but grew up in France (in the gorgeous city of Paris, to be precise). Although French is her mother tongue, her parents insisted early on that she learn to speak English. She first discovered SF through the works of Isaac Asimov, and then moved to fantasy when she happened upon a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s “The Earthsea Quartet”, which today remains one of her favorite books in the genre. Her writing took off after she won the Writers of the Future contest and got picked out of Interzone‘s slushpile by the inimitable Jetse de Vries; this marked the beginning of a growing number of sales, out of which several were made to semi-professional or professional markets. She was able to join SFWA as an Active Member in 2008, and became a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009, narrowly losing to David Anthony Durham. Her first novel, Servant of the Underworld sold to HarperCollins imprint Angry Robot following a lucky break involving an agent, an editor and a delayed flight (see full story here at the Angry Robot website). Servant of the Underworld is a cross between a historical Aztec fantasy and a murder-mystery, featuring ghostly jaguars, bloodthirsty gods and fingernail-eating monsters. For more information, see the novels webpage. Aliette is currently working on the sequel to Servant of the Underworld (more hungry ghosts, more blood, and more magic).
Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Who Fears Death (a Nebula Award Nominee for “Best Novel”). Her YA novels include Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize), The Shadow Speaker (winner of the CBS Parallax Award) and Long Juju Man (winner of the Macmillan Prize for Africa). Her latest is YA novel Akata Witch, released in April, 2011. Okorafor is a professor at Chicago State University.
Ekaterina Sedia
Ekaterina Sedia was born and raised in Moscow, where her parents and the rest of the family still reside. She moved to New Jersey, and shares a house with the best spouse in the world and two cats. She teaches botany and plant ecology at a state liberal arts college, garden, and writes books. Her novels, The House of Discarded Dreams, The Secret History of Moscow and The Alchemy of Stone are currently available from Prime Books. Her short stories sold to Analog, Baen’s Universe, Fantasy Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Dark Wisdom, as well as Japanese Dreams (Prime Books) and Magic in the Mirrorstone (Mirrorstone Books) anthologies.
Charles Tan
Charles Tan’s fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, Philippine Speculative Fiction and the anthology The Dragon and the Stars (ed. by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi). He has contributed nonfiction to websites such as The Shirley Jackson Awards, Fantasy Magazine, The World SF Blog, and SF Signal. In 2009, he won the Last Drink Bird Head Award for International Activism. He is also a 2011 World Fantasy nominee for the Special Award, Non-Professional category. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler, or Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009.
Administrators
Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has lived variously in South Africa, the UK, Asia and the remote island-nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. Lavie’s first novel, The Bookman, was published in January 2010 by by HarperCollins’ new Angry Robot imprint (now an imprint of Osprey Publishing) in the UK, and in September 2010 in the US. It has since sold in translation to Germany and Israel. Lavie’s second novel, Camera Obscura, was published April 2011. Forthcoming is Osama (2011), Martian Sands (2012) and the third novel in the Bookman Histories, The Great Game (2012). Lavie’s other works include novellas An Occupation of Angels, Cloud Permutations and Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God, linked-story collection HebrewPunk, and collaborative novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (with Nir Yaniv), as well as numerous short stories. He has also written a short play, a Hebrew poetry collection, and scripts for comics. Lavie won the inaugural Clarke-Bradbury competition in 2003 (sponsored by the European Space Agency), is a three times nominee for the Israeli Geffen Award, and was nominated for the Sturgeon Award in 2011. He is a current World Fantasy Award nominee for his work on the World SF Blog.
Sean Wallace
Sean Wallace is the founder and editor for Prime Books, which won a World Fantasy Award in 2006. In the past he was co-editor of Fantasy Magazine and two-time Hugo Award winning and two-time World Fantasy nominee Clarkesworld Magazine; the editor of the following anthologies: Best New Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror: The Best of the Year, Jabberwocky, Japanese Dreams, and The Mammoth Book of Steampunk; and co-editor of Bandersnatch, Fantasy Annual, Phantom and Weird Tales: The 21st Century. He lives in Rockville MD with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.
