The Church of Accelerated Redemption

Aliette de Bodard is a French-American speculative fiction writer. She is of French/Vietnamese descent, born in the USA, and grew up in Paris. French is her mother-tongue, but she writes in English. A graduate of École Polytechnique, she works as a software engineer specialising in image processing and is a member of the Written in Blood writers group.

She was a 2007 winner of Writers of the Future, and in 2009 was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She has been published in Interzone, Hub magazine, Black Static, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, Apex Magazine, among others.

She won the 2012 Nebula Award and Locus Award for Best Short Story for her short story "Immersion." She also won the 2013 Nebula Award for "The Waiting Stars". Her short story "The Shipmaker" won the 2010 British Science Fiction Award for Best Short Fiction.

Her novelette "The Jaguar House, in Shadow" was nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Her short story "Shipbirth" was also nominated for the Nebula. Her novella "On a Red Station, Drifting," released by Immersion Press in December 2012, was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo. The science fiction work chronicles the conflict between two members of an extended Vietnamese family on a space station ruled by an AI, and is part of Bodard's Asian-dominated alternate-history series.

Many of her stories are set in alternate history worlds where Aztec or pre-communist Chinese cultures are dominant. Her novel Servant of the Underworld (Angry Robot/HarperCollins) is a historical fantasy/mystery set in the fifteenth-century Aztec Empire.

Bodard's short story collection Scattered Among Strange Worlds was released in July, 2012. The collection features two science fiction stories entitled "Scattered Along the River of Heaven" and "Exodus Tides". Her short story "The Dust Queen" was published in the science fiction anthology Reach for Infinity in 2014.

Her novel The House of Shattered Wings, set in a devastated Paris ruled by fallen angels, was published by Gollancz/Roc in August 2015. It won the BSFA Award for Best Novel of 2015. Her story "Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight" won the BSFA Award for Best Short Story of 2015, the first time a single author has ever won both fiction categories in the same year.

Gareth L. Powell was born and raised in Bristol, where he still lives, and his early mentors included Diana Wynne Jones and Helen Dunmore. His novels have twice won the BSFA Award, and been finalists for both the Locus Award in the US and the Seiun Award in Japan. He is probably best known for his acclaimed Embers of War space opera series, which includes the novels Embers of War, Fleet of Knives, and Light of Impossible Stars. He is a popular guest and speaker at conventions and literary events, and can often be found on Twitter @garethlpowell giving free advice to aspiring authors.