K.A. Doore
K.A. Doore is a writer and shouter of queer sci-fi and fantasy who lives in mid-Michigan with her coffee, cats, children, and wife. The Chronicles of Ghadid is her debut fantasy trilogy, starting with The Perfect Assassin. While she enjoys writing about stabbing and stabbing implements, she’s actually terrified of blood, but she’ll be fine as long as no one learns about that. Find her at kadoore.com or follow her @KA_Doore.
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Kushner’s Riverside series begins with the cult classic Swordspoint, followed by The Privilege of the Sword, The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman); and, most recently, the collaborative prequel Tremontaine for SerialBox.com and Saga Press. The author herself recorded all three novels in audiobook form for Neil Gaiman Presents/Audible.com, winning an Audie Award for Swordspoint. Her mythic fantasy novel Thomas the Rhymer won the World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Awards, and is a Gollancz “Fantasy Masterwork.” She has taught writing at the Clarion Workshop, the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and Hollins University. She lives in New York City with her wife, author and educator Delia Sherman, and a great many theater and airplane ticket stubs they just don’t have the heart to throw away, especially not now. “The Sweet Tooth of Angwar Bec,” while written as a standalone story for this volume, does happen to take place about five years after the events of The Privilege of the Sword. She currently is finishing a fourth novel in the series. She’s on Twitter as @EllenKushner. Her website is www.EllenKushner.com, where you can also sign up for her SubStack newsletter.
Ann LeBlanc
Ann LeBlanc lives in Massachusetts with her wife, where she writes about queer yearning, culinary adventures, and death. Her fiction can be read in sub-Q Magazine, If There’s Anyone Left, and the Spring 2021 issue of Fireside Magazine. She edits for The Spectacles Blog and can be found on Twitter at @RobotLeBlanc.
Yoon Ha Lee
Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, won the Locus Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards; its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, were also Hugo finalists. His middle-grade space opera, Dragon Pearl, was a New York Times bestseller and won the Locus Award for best YA novel. His next novel, the standalone fantasy Phoenix Extravagant, will be out from Solaris Books in October 2020. Lee’s fiction has appeared in venues such as Tor.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld Magazine, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Lee is a lapsed épée fencer. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators. You can find him online at yoonhalee.com and patreon.com/yhlee.
Jennifer Mace
Jennifer Mace is a queer Brit who roams the Pacific Northwest in search of tea and interesting plant life. A two-time Hugo finalist podcaster for her work with Be The Serpent, she writes about strange magic and the cracks that form in society. Her short fiction may be found in Cast of Wonders, Syntax & Salt, and GlitterShip, and her poetry has appeared in Uncanny Magazine. While Silk & Steel is far from the first anthology she has pitched to the internet, this is the first time the internet has called her bluff. If you want to keep track of her future hijinks, you can find her online at www.englishmace.com.
Freya Marske
Freya Marske lives in Australia, where she is yet to be killed by any form of wildlife. She writes stories full of magic, blood, and as much kissing as she can get away with, and she co-hosts the Hugo Award–nominated podcast Be the Serpent. Her hobbies include figure skating and discovering new art galleries, and she is on a quest to try all the gin in the world. Her debut novel, the queer historical fantasy A Marvellous Light, is forthcoming from Tor.Com Publishing in 2021. Find her on Twitter at @freyamarske, or at freyamarske.com.
Elaine McIonyn
Elaine McIonyn spent her wayward youth jaunting around Europe, teaching English, and translating. She lived in Austria, Germany, and the UK before returning to her native Ireland just in time to join the staff of Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, class of 2018. She is also, perhaps unwisely, licensed to sail dinghies and small catamarans. She co-runs a sci-fi and fantasy writing group in Dublin and lives with her partner (and a selection of loose-leaf teas).
Cara Patterson
Cara Patterson is a Scottish writer who dabbles in any genre that takes her fancy, sprinkling in generous helpings of diversity, puns, and sarcasm. Between the Out of Time time-travel series, published under the pen name C.B. Lewis, and a range of short stories in award-winning anthologies, she’s starting to get a handle on this writing lark.
Alison Tam
Alison Tam is a queer Taiwanese-American writer and occasional game developer. Her short story “Beauty, Glory, Thrift” was part of the Book Smugglers’ Gods and Monsters series, and her personal essay “The Drag Kings of Taipei” was featured in Autostraddle. To her knowledge, she has never fought a duel. Alison likes writing about complicated diaspora emotions, women who love and appreciate each other, and non-Western worlds. She’s lived in Taipei, Shanghai, and California, but her home will always be online. You can find her on her website at alisontam.github.io or on Twitter @TheTamSlam.
S.K. Terentiev
S.K. Terentiev lives in the wilds of North Texas, where she’s on the hunt for the perfect latte or tacos al pastor. A member of the DFW Writers’ Workshop, she writes speculative short stories and is currently working on her first fantasy novel. She’s never seen a chupacabra or a werewolf, as far as she knows. She can be found on Twitter at @SKTerentiev or her website SKTerentiev.com.
Django Wexler
Django Wexler is the author of flintlock fantasy series The Shadow Campaigns, middle-grade fantasy The Forbidden Library, and YA fantasy The Wells of Sorcery. His latest is the epic fantasy Ashes of the Sun. In his former life as a software engineer, he worked on AI research and programming languages. He currently lives near Seattle with his wife, two cats, and a teetering mountain of books. When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts.
Chris Wolfgang
Chris Wolfgang writes and edits sci-fi and fantasy fiction in Omaha, Nebraska. She changes her hair color frequently, attempts to study foreign languages outside of a classroom, and occasionally reads tarot. Follow her on Twitter at @chriswolfgang for queer feminist yelling, often about things she finds exciting, but sometimes not. She’s a delight.
Neon Yang
Neon Yang (they/them) is queer, non-binary, and the author of the Tensorate series of novellas from Tor.Com Publishing (The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, The Ascent to Godhood). Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Lambda awards. A Clarion West alum, they graduated from the University of East Anglia with an MA in Creative Writing and currently live in Singapore.
Kaitlyn Zivanovich
Kaitlyn Zivanovich is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and current speculative fiction writer who pens short stories to avoid editing her novels. She’s lived a good chunk of her adult life in the Middle East, and speaks enough Arabic to get around Egypt but not enough to impress anyone in Morocco. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise Workshop and an associate editor at PodCastle. Kaitlyn grew up as a Third Culture Kid, and she and her husband are inflicting the same lifestyle on their four loud children. Currently they all live in a small farming village in Okinawa, Japan. Pre-coronavirus she spent her free time hiking, traveling, and learning new languages. Now she stress-bakes and binge-watches Turkish TV shows.
Acknowledgements
We owe so many thanks for making this book everything it could be. We (Django, Janine, and Macey, that is) would be especially lost without our Kickstarter backers. Thank you for believing in this anthology!
These wonderful people made this book possible (so that we could pay our artists, our cover designer, and all the other people whose work went into making this a high-quality product). In pa
rticular, we’d like to thank the following backers for their contributions (in alphabetical order by first name because you have to order things somehow):
9th Level Games
A. Charis Goldflam
A. Fourtet
A. Hancock
A. Jade
A. Miura
A. Rachel Haddix
A.Okuonghae
A.Y. Chao
Abigail
Accolade Aula
Acolet
Adam Duke
Adam Pilfold-Bagwell
Adam Puckette
Adam S. Gravano
ADC
Adri Joy
AdriAnne Strickland
Adrien Barnes
Adron Buske
Aemil K.
Aerylaance
Afik "Ninja" Blitz
AG.91
AH
Aidan Doyle
Aidan Miller
Aily & Mimi
Aimee Benson
Aimee Ogden
AingealWroth
Aisling nic Lynne
Aiyesha
AJ Ryan
AK Turza
Akhila Sriram
Al Clay
Al Julian
Alaina
Alan Wu
Alana M T
Alanna Noel Solomon
Alastor
Aleida
Alena Cicholewski
Alessandra Cristallini
Alex "Fox" Dell
Alex Caligiuri
Alex Claman
Alex Hardison
Alex Jackson
Alex Leitch
Alex Leuthold
Alex McKenzie
Alex Miller
Alex Roscura Guerrero
Alexa Donley
Alexander Belford
Alexandra Martin
Alexandra Rowland
Alexandre Muñiz
Alexis Eaton
Alexis Lockwell
Ali Fisher
Alice Kroutikova
Alice Lemieux
Alice Reininger
Alice Southey
Alicia Z
Alison C
Alison Lam
Alison Mann
Alison N
Alleyne Dickens
Allie B.
Allison Drinnon
Allison Hewett
Allison Hinds
Allison Liem
Alyssa Carter
Alyssa Hull
Alyssa Marie
Alyssa Ziegenhorn
AM Meca
Amaelalin
Amalia Nanciu
Amalie N Ingham
Amalija Vitezović
Amanda Besch
Amanda C. Davis
Amanda Cook
Amanda Davidson
Amanda Pester
Amanda Sumner
Amaryllis Jeanne Quilliou
Amber Dawn Loranger
Amber Marie Goss
Amber R Lewis
Amber Yust
Amberle Browne
Ambrai
Amelia Facchin
Amy Boggs
Amy Hirst
Amy Huang
Amy Schaefer
Amy Zhou
Amy Zuverink
An Especially Belligerent Magpie
Ana Maria Curtis
Andi DiSpirito
Andi Kent
Andie Krutsch
Andie Larson
Andrea L
Andrea Mitchell
Andrea Salt
Andrea Tatjana
Andrea Viemeister
Andrew C
Andrew Lyons
Andrew Taylor
Andromeda Taylor-Wallace
Andy Kinzler
Angela Banks
Angela Song
Anita “Neeters” Twitchell
Ann Zhu
Anna Cook
Anna Goldberg
Anna Kat
Anna Lynch
Anna NW
Anna S
Anna Smith
Anna-Rose Kirchner
Anne Gwin
Annie Blitzen
Annie Fitzgerald
Anonymous (10)
Anonymous H.
Anrea Jones
Antha Ann Adkins
Anthony Chanza
Antoine Dailly
April Herms
April Ouimet
April Walsh
Apurva Desai
Aria Stewart
Arnela Bektas
Artemis
Ash B
Ash Brown
Ash Hawrychuk
Ash Humphreys
Ash J
Ash Walker
Ashe
Ashe Azrak
Asher Holy
Ashleigh B.
Ashley Hedden
Ashley Kelly
Ashryn Brynmore
Ashtin Johnson
Astrid & John
Atthis Arts
Aunt Dena for Tia
Aura ✾ V
Auri Wang
Ava Dickerson
Ayla Ounce
Aynjel Kaye
B. A. Hencher
B. Chugg
B. K. Neville
B. Woodchuck
B.C. Kinney
B.T.Halko
Beatrice
Beatrice Waterhouse
Belle McQuattie
Benjamin Hausman
Benjamin Jaeger
Bernd Linke
Beryl Egerter
Beth Culp
Beth Morris Tanner
beth✨
Bethany L. Sherwood
Betsy Hanes Perry
Betsy Hanes Perry
Betty
Bhavya Tanguturu
Bill Frerking
Black Lives Matter
blackcoat
blatanville
Blazej Szpakowicz
Blue
blue wisteria
Bob/Sally Milne
Bobbie Crane
bonnie blossom
Bonnie Warford
BookGeekGrrl
Bookwyrm
Brad Ackerman
Brad Gardner
Bradamante Smith
Brandi
Brandon Eaker
Brandon Long
Breanna Teintze
Brendan
Brenna Noonan
Brett Bennett
Brian A Liberge
Brian Quirt
BRITTANY AND LAURA MOELLER
Brittany Buell
Brooks Moses
Bruce Baugh
Bry Shuter
Brynn R.
C Ferguson
C. Corbin Talley
C. L. Polk
C. Lynn Reimer
c.billadeau
C.E. Huddleston
C.N. Rowen
Cait Greer
Caitlin and Emmelie Pinz
Caitlin Colbert
Caitlin Ellerbe & Elizabeth Vandermolen
Caitlin McDonald
Caitlin Starling
Caitlyn Modaff
Calamity's Child
Cali Martin
Calista Melano
Calley Oresick
CalypsoTea
Camilla Boslev
Camille Lucas
Cara Murray
Carah Helwig
Care Ryan-Smith
Carina S.
carisa Bjorngaard
Carl A Carter
Carl M.
Carl Rigney
Carla H.
Carla M. Lee
Carlin Wednesday
Carly
Carmen Fernandes
Carol Fujimoto
Carol J. Guess
Carol Mammano
Caroline R.
Caroline Wong, Hayley Bhola
Carolyn Elizabeth
Carolyn M
Carolyn Saber
Carolyn V.
Carrie Anderson
Carrie Hausman
Caryn Ojemann
Casey Andrew
Casper Miller
Cass Holiday
Cassandra May
Cassandra Panek
Cassie A Stearns
Cassie H.
Cassie Katarn
Castella Semaphore
Cat
Cat Bascle
Cat Langford
Cate Crowley
Catherine Baker
Cathin Yang
Cathy Green
Cécile Taquet
Ceillie Simkiss
Celeste J
Cena Ringwald
Chaitan Bandela
Charles Bailey
Charles T
Charlie N
Charlie Rodgers
Charlix W.
Charlotte G.
Charlotte Wight
Chel
Chell
Chelle Parker
Chelsea Buchler
Chelsea Fay Baumgartner
ChelseaJahaliel
Cheryl Morgan
Chigbo Ikejiani
Chloe Isla
Chloe R.
Chloe Smith Lopez
Choco
Chris C.
Chris Joseph
Chris Mangum
Christina Bell
Christina Kjellstrand
Christina Koller
Christine Hanolsy
Christine L
Christine S
Christine Welman
Christopher Hwang
Christopher K. Davis
Cían Lupiani
CJ Gibson
CL Biles
Claire Farron
Claire Keeney
Claire Mead
Claire Reynolds-Peterson
Claire Rojstaczer
Clare Janke
Clarissa C. S. Ryan
Clarissa Stefek
Claudia Drobel
Claudia Fontana Santoyo
Clayton Culwell
Cliona Shakespeare
Cody Woodson
Cole F.
Cole Lopez
Colleen O
Colleen W.
Coral Moore
Corey Thatcher
Corinna Cornett
Cos
Court
Courtney S
Courtney Willis
cozyhades
Cristin Heart
Crystal
Crystal Lynn
Curtis Mitchell
Cynthia Gonsalves
Cynthia Harper
Cynthia Phillips
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