Victor LaValle
was born February 3, 1972 in Manhattan and grew up in Queens. He earned an English degree from Cornell University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University.
His debut collection was
The Ecstatic was published in 2002, followed by Shirley Jackson Award winner
Big Machine (2009), Shirley Jackson Award finalist
The Devil in Silver (2012), and World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award winner
The Changeling (2017), also a Shirley Jackson Award finalist. Lovecraftian novella
The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) won British Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Awards and was a finalist for Hugo, World Fantasy, Sturgeon Memorial, and Nebula Awards. He also wrote Bram Stoker Award-winning graphic novel
Meg Elison was born May 10, 1982. Her military family moved frequently, living in Europe and more than a dozen US states. She left home at 14 and dropped out of high school, but later attended community college and completed her degree at the University of California, Berkeley.
Elison’s debut, feminist postapocalyptic novel
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014), won the Philip K. Dick Award and launched the Road to Nowhere series, which also includes Dick Award finalist
The Book of Etta (2017) and
The Book of Flora (2019). Her latest novel is her YA debut,
Find Layla (2020). She has published more than a dozen stories, some of which are collected in