Ellen Kushner's cult classic "Fantasy of Manners" novel Swordspoint introduced readers to the world to which she has since returned in The Privilege of the Sword (Locus Award, Nebula nominee), The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman), and a growing handful of related short stories. She recorded all three novels in audiobook form for Neil Gaiman Presents/Audible.com, and Swordspoint won a 2012 Audie Award. Her novel Thomas the Rhymer won both the World Fantasy and Mythopoeic awards. With Holly Black, she co-edited Welcome to Bordertown, a revival of the original urban fantasy shared world series created by Terri Windling. A co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, Ellen Kushner was also the longtime host of the national public radio show Sound & Spirit, and created several one-woman shows for it. Most recently, she revisited the world of Riverside first popularized in Swordspoint with Tremontaine, a collaborative serial novel from SerialBox.com. She lives in New York City with Delia Sherman and no cats whatsoever.

Ysabeau S. Wilce was born in California and has followed the drum through Spain and most of its North American colonies. She became a lapsed historian when facts no longer compared favorably to the shining lies of her imagination. Prior to this capitulation, she researched arcane military subjects and presented educational programs on how to boil laundry at several frontier army forts. She is a graduate of Clarion West and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, and won the Andre Norton Award. Her novels include Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog, Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from A Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined To Her Room), and Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Importance of Packing Light. Her most recent work, a collection of short stories called Prophecies,Libels & Dreams was published in 2014. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is very fond of mules.