Jeff VanderMeer
with Kathe Koja

Widely regarded as one of the world’s best fantasists, Jeff VanderMeer grew up in the Fiji Islands and spent six months traveling through Asia, Africa, and Europe before returning to the United States. These travels have deeply influenced his fiction. He is the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant. VanderMeer’s book-length fiction has been translated into 15 languages, while his short fiction has appeared in several year’s best anthologies and short-listed for Best American Short Stories. He is in Spartanburg courtesy of Wofford's Shared Worlds conference.

Kathe Koja has written the YA novels Buddha Boy and Headlong, as well as the adult novels The Cipher, Skin, Extremities, Strange Angels, and Under the Poppy. Her first novel The Cipher received the Bram Stoker Award and the Locus Award, and it was nominated for the Philip K Dick Award. She also won a Deathrealm Award for Strange Angels.