Awkward Robots

Deborah Bailey is an expat American living in a tiny British village that prides itself on its annual potato festival. A full-time freelance writer and editor, she co-chairs the Board of the Nottingham Writers Studio. Her fiction has appeared in Mirror Dance, This Dark Matter, Luna Station Quarterly, and Wicked Words Quarterly, among others. Her story “Mission Critical” was selected for inclusion in Luna Station Quarterly’s first Best of Anthology. She attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop in 2012. She blogs at http://fourgreensquares.wordpress.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter at @4GreenSquares.

Eliza Blair’s fiction has appeared in Nature and A Science Fiction Omnibus. She recently moved back to Cleveland, her hometown, to pursue a full-time career as a celebrity wife who moonlights in hugging kittens. She is working on a novel about a dog princess and her dragon at the dawn of the agricultural revolution. She can be found online at elizablair.net and on Twitter (@elizaeffect).

Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts the popular screenwriting podcast Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room (available on iTunes and Stitcher), reads slush for Apex Magazine, and she’s a Staff Writer for Bitch Flicks, an online feminist film review site. Her work has appeared in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (Crossed Genres Publishing), The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8 (Aqueduct Press), the SF/F anthology, How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens (Upper Rubber Boot Books), and Uncanny Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @LisaBolekaja.

Sadie Bruce is a 2012 Clarion graduate married to another 2012 Clarion graduate whose location, thanks to the good people in immigration, can now be disclosed. She spreads her time between librarianship, two wild boys, reading, and, of course, writing. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, The Colored Lens, Spark: A Creative Anthology Volume IV, and Steampunk Magazine. Follow her on Twitter (@sadiekie).

E. G. Cosh lives in London with her partner and nurses a secret crush on all spreadsheets. She is a writer and illustrator, and is working on her first novel: a space opera about the daughter of an intergalactic arms dealer who runs away to join a peace cult. It’s kind of like the Matrix meets Portlandia. Find her online at egcosh.com and on Twitter.

Danica Cummins is a freelance writer and copyeditor living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poetry has been published in Kaleidotrope and her fiction in Luna Station Quarterly, among others. She currently finishing a novel about a murderer on an island in the inland sea in the middle of the continental US. Follow her on Twitter (@JurassicDanica).

Lara Elena Donnelly lives in Brooklyn with two swell humans and two needy animals. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and Mythic Delirium, among others. Her debut novel, the glamorous spy thriller Amberlough, is forthcoming from Tor Books in January 2017. Find her at laradonelly.com and on Twitter as @larazontally.

Eric Esser lives and writes in San Francisco with his love Courtney. When he was small he used to wander the perimeter of his elementary school soccer field every recess imagining stories set in other worlds, and for some reason no one made fun of him for it. He suspects they discussed him secretly. He is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association and his fiction has appeared on Pseudopod and most recently in the Chilling Horror Short Stories anthology from Flame Tree Publishing. Visit him at ericesser.net or follow him on Twitter (@ericdesser).

Jonathan Fortin lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to attending Clarion, he graduated summa cum laude from San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program. Since then he has worked in a multitude of industries, including catering, state office work, video game journalism, acting, and voice acting. When he isn’t writing, Jonathan enjoys reading comics, wearing corsets, singing death growls, and indulging in all things odd and macabre. He is currently seeking representation for an unabashedly Gothic novel about demons in Victorian England. You can follow him on Twitter (@Jonathan_Fortin).

Chris Kammerud’s fiction and reviews have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Interfictions Annex, Dark Heart Volume 2: An Anthology of YA Dark Fairy Tales, and an exclusive e-chapbook created for the Interfictions Online Indiegogo campaign. He lives in London, fulfilling, at long last, a dream he first dreamed the night his wise, older sister gifted her kid brother a cassette tape containing the very best skits of Monty Python. Presently, he’s at work on a near-future novel set in Korea that concerns love, magic, revolution, and K-pop. Follow his adventures in space and time at chriskammerud.com and on Twitter (@Cuvols).

R.K. Kalaw was first published in a second grade newsletter, and has spent her ensuing years trying to replicate that initial heady success. She enjoys diving, sculpting, watching weeds thrive in her garden, and collecting the bones of small animals. At the moment, she’s working on a historical fantasy set in the trenches of WWI, featuring redcaps, changelings, and blood magic. She sometimes lurks on Twitter.

Pierre Liebenberg is a South African expat and Clarion 2012 graduate. He lives in the American heartland with his favourite American (and fellow Clarion graduate) and divides his time between teaching high-school English and working on a novel about a sea of invisible sunflowers on the Kansan prairie. Follow him on Twitter (@theliebenberg) or visit thisseahorseissunshine.com.   

Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, AGNI, NPR, The American Reader, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in several anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Best Women’s Erotica. She has been the recipient of the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, a Millay Colony for the Arts residency, the CINTAS Foundation Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship, and nominated for a Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Philadelphia with her partner. She tweets at @carmenmmachado.

Sarah Mack more commonly known as Smack, has had short stories and poems published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Gone Lawn, The Art of Deduction, and Into the Teeth of the Wind. She is a San Diego native with the new found freedom that comes with a telecommuting job—in short, we have no idea where she is at the moment, but she can always be found on Twitter (@whatsmacksaid).

Dan McMinn lives with his wife, Lecia, and two sons in in Lviv, Ukraine. He is fascinated by history, war, language, low-visibility virtues, and the peculiarly dark sense of humor he has found in Eastern Europe. A bit of his work can be found at McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies. He is nearly impossible to follow on any media, because he moves erratically through the alleyways of the system, presumably to avoid capture.

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Shimmer, Strange Horizons, and The Minnesota Review, among others. He is a nominee for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, and a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. His debut novel The Art of Starving is forthcoming from HarperCollins. He lives in New York City, and at www.samjmiller.com (and on Instagram, and on Twitter, and on Tumblr).

Luke R. Pebler lives in Austin, TX. When he’s not writing, drinking, or napping, he works as a video editor. His fiction has appeared in Escape Pod, The Sword & Laser Anthology, and other places. Follow him on Twitter for a steady drip of snappy inanities.