Guests of Honor
Jonathan Maberry
JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times best-seller, five-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, anthology editor, comic book writer, executive producer, magazine feature writer, playwright, and writing teacher/lecturer. He is the editor of Weird Tales Magazine and president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He is the recipient of the Inkpot Award, three Scribe Awards, and was named one of the Today’s Top Ten Horror Writers. His books have been sold to more than thirty countries. He writes in several genres including thriller, horror, science fiction, epic fantasy, and mystery; and he writes for adults, middle grade, and
young adult.
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Paul Tremblay
Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book awards and is the author of Survivor Song, The Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland, and the short story collection, Growing Things and Other Stories.
His essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly online, and numerous year’s-best anthologies. He has a master’s degree in mathematics and lives outside Boston with his family.
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Justina Ireland
Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including Dread Nation and its sequel Deathless Divide, Rust in the Root, the middle-grade novel Ophie's Ghosts, which won the Scott O'Dell award for historical fiction, and a number of Star Wars books including Lando’s Luck, Spark of the Resistance, A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, and Mission to Disaster. She is one of the primary story architects of the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia initiative in addition to penning a number of Marvel comics. Justina recently co-wrote episode three of Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher. She is a former editor in chief of FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, for which she won a World Fantasy Award. She has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards and she won the Locus award for Dread Nation. She holds a BA in History from Georgia Southern and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. You can find Justina on Instagram as @justina.ireland, at her website justinaireland.com, and you can find her work wherever great books are sold.
Nisi Shawl
Nisi Shawl is the multiple award-winning author, co-author, and editor of over a dozen books of speculative fiction and related nonfiction, including the standard text on diverse representation in literature, Writing the Other: A Practical Approach; the Nebula Award finalist novel Everfair; the first two volumes of the New Suns anthology series; and the short story collection Filter House. They’ve taught and lectured at Duke University, Spelman College, Stanford University, Sarah Lawrence College, and many other learning institutions. Recent titles include a new, horror-adjacent story collection, Our Fruiting Bodies; the Middle Grade historical fantasy novel Speculation; and Kinning, their book-length sequel to Everfair, an excerpt of which is available on the Tor/Forge blog. “Sun River” and three other short story sequels to Everfair are appearing on the Tor.com site in 2023 and 2024. Their Beat era novella The Day and Night Books of Mardou Fox is forthcoming in Fall 2024.
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Rob Savage
Rob Savage initially gained attention at the age of 19 when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited the low-budget romantic drama film Strings (2012), he later became more widely known for his work in horror films and has since co-written and directed lockdown horror hit Host (2020), co-written and directed Dashcam (2021), and directed Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman (2023).
