Barbara Berson received her MA from The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She's been an editor in the book publishing industry, first in her native New York City and then in Toronto, for the past 25 years. For the last decade, as Senior Editor at Penguin Canada, she's worked with both established and emerging authors of literary fiction, non-fiction and young adult books. She is among the few Canadian editors to champion fantasy literature.
She is now an independent consultant to the writing and publishing communities, and teaches at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.
John Dupuis is the Head of the Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University in Toronto. He blogs about professional issues (and reviews science books) at Confessions of a Science Librarian. He also sporadically reviews other books at his other blog, The Reading Diary of John Dupuis.
On the literary side of things, John was the co-editor (with Mark Shainblum) of the Aurora Award-winning anthology Arrowdreams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas (Nuage Editions, 1998). He also won an Aurora Award for his essay in Solaris, "L'entreprise de Frankenstein." John has published essays and criticism in Warp and The New York Review of Science Fiction and has appeared on panels in numerous conferences. He lives in Toronto.
New York Times best-selling author Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms role-playing-game setting and has written many short stories and novels (such as the Elminster series) that take place within the Realms. His non-Realms novels include the Band of Four and Falconfar series, and his non-Realms short stories have appeared in many forums, including the horror anthology Be Afraid! (Tundra Books, 2000), edited by Edo Van Belkom, and The Bakka Anthology (Salman Nensi, 2002), edited by Kristen Pederson Chew. He served as a judge for the 2007 World Fantasy Awards. Ed works part-time in libraries and as a freelance game designer and full-time as a writer of fantasy, SF, horror and mystery fiction. He lives in Colborne, Ontario.
Sandra Kasturi is an editor, publisher and award-winning poet of the fantastic. She edited the speculative poetry anthology The Stars as Seen from This Particular Angle of Night (Red Deer Press, 2003). Her poetry collections include The Day I Ate Jupiter and Pursuits & Conjurings; Horrors, Guises, and The Animal Bridegroom was published by Tightrope Books in 2007. In 2008, she co-founded (with Brett Alexander Savory) The Vaike and Erich Rannu Fund for Writers of Speculative Literature. She is the publisher of Kelp Queen Press in Toronto, where she lives.
Simon Rose was born in Derbyshire, England. He graduated from university with a degree in history and has lived in Canada since 1990. He is also a graduate of the Institute of Children's Literature of West Redding, CT. Simon, his two children, and dog and cat live in Calgary, Alberta.
Simon's first novel for young readers, The Alchemist's Portrait, nominated for the Golden Eagle Award, was published in 2003. The Sorcerer's Letterbox, also nominated for the Golden Eagle Award as well as The Silver Birch Award, appeared in 2004, followed by The Clone Conspiracy in 2005, The Emerald Curse in 2006 and The Heretic's Tomb in 2007. He was also a contributing author to The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction: Volume One, published in 2007. A sixth novel, The Doomsday Mask, will be published in 2009.
