Audio/Visual – Fiction
John Zhu is the creator of the Chinese Lore Podcast (chineselore.com), which retells classic Chinese stories in English and adds context and commentary to help introduce audiences to literary works that are as important to Chinese culture as Shakespeare’s plays are to the West.
Launched in 2014, his podcast now boasts more than 450 episodes covering four classic Chinese novels: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Investiture of the Gods, and Journey to the West. Outside of podcasting, Zhu is a web development and communications professional who has worked in civic tech, higher education, and journalism
Audio/Visual – Nonfiction
V.M. Ayala (she/they) is a queer disabled biracial Mexican American sci-fi/fantasy writer. She loves dragons, space, their partner, and giant robots.
Their work has appeared in Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024, and elsewhere. She is also a streamer and TTRPG actual play performer—as well as one of the co-founders of OTHERSIDE, a queer speculative magazine. You can find her most social media places @spacevalkyries or at spacevalkyries.com.
Comics
Reimena Yee is a graphic novelist, illustrator, designer and arts manager. Originally from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. Reimena is an award-winning creator of multiple comics for adults and children, and a known advocate for the engagement of comics in public life. She is the curator behind the Comics Devices Library and the co-founder and co-organiser of Southeast Asian collective UNNAMED and the international peak arts body, Cartoonists United.
Editing
Diana M. Pho is a Hugo Award-winning fiction editor with nearly 20 years of experience in publishing, including roles at Hachette, Tor Publishing Group, and the Science Fiction Book Club. Presently, she is Editorial Director at Erewhon Books, acquiring and editing genre-bending and game-changing fiction. Additionally, she has a double B. A. in English and Russian Literature from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University.
Books she has edited have won the Thriller Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Nebula Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year Selection, among other honors. Diana herself is a two-time finalist for the Ignyte Award, a two-time finalist for the Locus Award, and a two-time Hugo Award recipient for Best Editor, Long-Form. She lives in New York City with her wife and their cats. You can learn more about her at dianampho.com.
Prose
Nghi Vo is the bestselling author of the novels Siren Queen, The Chosen and the Beautiful, and The City in Glass, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began with The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and Lambda Literary Awards and the LA Times and Ursula K. Le Guin Prizes, and has won the Crawford, Ignyte, and Hugo Awards. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.