Viable Paradise Instructors

Elizabeth Bear is the Hugo and Sturgeon Award-winning author of over thirty novels and 100 short stories. She was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She lives in an 18th-century house in Massachusetts with her husband, author Scott Lynch, and a small menagerie. Her recent books include Karen Memory, An Apprentice to Elves (co-written with Sarah Monette), The Stone in the Skull, and Ancestral Night (2018). The Best of Elizabeth Bear will be published by Subterranean in January 2020.

Max Gladstone has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and a finalist for the Hugo, John W Cambpell, and Lambda Awards. A narrative designer, writer, and consultant, Max is the author of the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence (starting with Three Parts Dead and most recently continuing in Ruin of Angels). His short fiction has appeared in Tor.com and in numerous anthologies. He has written games, comics, and interactive television, and was the lead writer of the urban fantasy procedural series Bookburners. Max’s most recent projects are the intergalactic adventure Empress of Forever and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the time travel epistolary spy-vs-spy novel This is How You Lose The Time War, both published in 2019.

Daryl Gregory writes genre-mixing novels, stories, and comics. His most recent novel, Spoonbenders, was published by Knopf in June 2017. Recent work includes the young adult novel Harrison Squared and the novella “We Are All Completely Fine”; the latter won the World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards, and was a finalist for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus awards. His novels also include Afterparty, an NPR and Kirkus best fiction book of 2014; Raising Stony Mayhall; The Devil’s Alphabet; and the Crawford-Award-winning Pandemonium. Much of his short fiction is collected in Unpossible and Other Stories.

Scott Lynch was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and lived in the Twin Cities area for most of his life; now he lives in an 18th-century house in Massachusetts with his wife, author Elizabeth Bear. The Lies of Locke Lamora, his first novel, was bought by Simon Spanton at Orion Books in August, 2004; subsequent novels in the Gentleman Bastard sequence are Red Seas under Red Skies (2007) and The Republic of Thieves (2013). His work has appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, and Times of London bestseller lists, and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.

Arkady Martine is a speculative fiction writer and, as Dr. AnnaLinden Weller, a historian of the Byzantine Empire, a climate and energy policy analyst, and a city planner. Under both names she writes about border politics, narrative and rhetoric, risk communication, and the edges of the world. Her debut novel, A Memory Called Empire, won the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and its sequel, A Desolation Called Peace, won the 2022 Hugo Award in the same category. Her latest novella, Rose/House, was nominated for the 2024 Hugo for Best Novella and won China’s 2024 Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Award for Best International Novella. Rose/House appeared in international wide release from Tor Publishing Group in March 2025. Arkady lives in New Mexico with her wife, the author Vivian Shaw. Find Arkady online at www.arkadymartine.net or on Bluesky as byzantienne.bsky.social.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is a consulting editor for Tor Books, where she has worked with authors ranging from Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson to Robert Charles Wilson, Jo Walton, and John M. Ford. At various points in her career she has also edited comic books, literary criticism, and utopian literature. Her essay collection Making Book was a Hugo finalist in 1995; a sequel, Making Conversation, was published in 2016. For other writing and publishing, she has been a Hugo finalist four times. With her husband, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, she co-edited the Hugo-nominated fanzine Izzard, won TAFF in 1985, and helped found the New York Review of Science Fiction; today, the Nielsen Haydens manage the weblog Making Light and were among the guests of honor at the 2016 Worldcon, MidAmericon 2, in Kansas City. Together, in 2003, they were awarded the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award (the “Skylark”), for service to the field.

Sherwood Smith began her publishing career in 1986, writing for adults, young adults, and middle-grade readers. To date she’s published over forty books. She’s also written short fiction, screenplays, media tie-ins, and collaborated with several authors including Andre Norton. Her 1995 novel Wren’s War was an Anne Lindbergh Honor Book. She’s twice been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and is a Nebula finalist. Her latest books are A Sword Named Truth, from DAW, and Time of Daughters.

Valerie Valdes’s work has been featured in Uncanny Magazine, Magic: the Gathering and several anthologies. Her debut novel Chilling Effect was shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was also named one of Library Journal’s best SF/fantasy novels of 2019. Her space fantasy novel, Where Peace Is Lost, was named a 2024 Reading List Council honor title. Writing as Lia Amador, her first contemporary fantasy romance novel, Witch You Would, is forthcoming from Avon Books in September 2025.

Valerie is co-editor of the award-winning Escape Pod science fiction podcast, and currently works as a freelance writer and copy editor. She is a graduate of the University of Miami and the Viable Paradise workshop and has taught classes and given lectures for Writer’s Digest University, Clarion West and Georgia State University. She lives in Georgia with her husband and children.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden is Editor-at-Large and VP of Tor Books. Authors he has edited at Tor include Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Glen Cook, Charles de Lint, Damon Knight, Ken MacLeod, George R. R. Martin, Laura J. Mixon, Harry Turtledove, David Weber, and Jack Womack, among many others; in addition, he has been responsible for publishing many notable first novels, including those of Maureen F. McHugh, Susan Palwick, Jonathan Lethem, Cory Doctorow, Jo Walton, John Scalzi, and Ada Palmer. He also occasionally acquires and edits original fiction for Tor.com. His most recent anthology is Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), co-edited with the late David G. Hartwell. He has won three Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award for his editorial work. With his wife, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, he co-edited the Hugo-nominated fanzine Izzard, won TAFF in 1985, and helped found the New York Review of Science Fiction; in 2016, they were among the guests of honor at the 2016 Worldcon, MidAmericon 2, in Kansas City. The Nielsen Haydens’ website is at nielsenhayden.com, including their blog, Making Light.

Fonda Lee is the author of the epic fantasy Green Bone Saga, consisting of the novels Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy, along with a prequel novella The Jade Setter of Janloon and a short story collection, Jade Shards. She is also the author of the science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo and Cross Fire. Her most recent work is the fantasy novella, Untethered Sky. Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and a five-time winner of the Aurora Award (Canada’s national science fiction and fantasy award), as well as a multiple finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Oregon Book Award. Her novels have garnered multiple starred reviews and appeared on Best of Year lists from NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, and others. Jade City has been translated in a dozen languages, named to TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time, and optioned for television development.

C. L. Polk (they/them) wrote the Hugo finalist series Kingston Cycle, beginning with the WFA winning novel Witchmark. Their Subjective Chaos Kind of Award winning novel The Midnight Bargain was a Canada Reads, Nebula, Locus, Ignyte, and World Fantasy Award finalist. After leaving high school early, they have worked as a film extra, sold vegetables on the street, and identified exotic insect species for a vast collection of lepidoptera before settling down to write fantasy novels.
Mx. Polk lives in Southern Alberta, among the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3). They dwell in an apartment the same age as them with too many books, and a yarn stash that could last a decade. A city person at heart, they menace the streets on rideshare scooters and ride a green bicycle with a basket on the front.

• Erin Black
• Steven Brust
• Cory Doctorow
• Debra Doyle
• Amal El-Mohtar
• Steven Gould
• James Patrick Kelly
• James D. Macdonald
• Laura J. Mixon
• Maureen F. McHugh
• Elizabeth Moon
• John Scalzi
• Nisi Shawl
• Lawrence Watt-Evans