Jay Caselberg is an Australian author and poet whose work has appeared around the world and been translated into several languages. He currently resides in Germany and can be found at Caselberg.net.

This story originally appeared in Borderlands (Australia), January 2006.

Narrated by Randal L. Schwartz

Randal L. Schwartz is best well known for his seminal books on the Perl programming language that helped make the world wide web possible and popular. He produced a weekly audio and video podcast on open source software, but has given that up after 13 years to get those five hours per week back again. Between the podcast, and bouncing all over the world teaching programming and speaking at conferences, he’s no stranger to the limelight. He enjoys pulling out his gear to record yet another narration, and likens it to “getting to read bedtime stories to the kids I never had”, and looks forward to future assignments

Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis

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K. A. Teryna is an award-winning author and illustrator. She was born in two places at once, one of which is beyond the Arctic Circle. Her fiction has been translated from Russian into six languages. English translations of her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Reactor, Apex, F&SF, Podcastle, and elsewhere. Her English-language short story collection Black Hole Heart and Other Stories has been published by Fairwood Press. As of late, Chekhov the Cat has become K.A. Teryna's co-author. He's in charge of keeping her warm and firmly in her seat. K.A. Teryna's website is www.k-a-teryna.blogspot.com.

The English language translation of "The Errata" by Alex Shvartsman originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March/April 2023.

Narration by: Tahereh Safavi

Tahereh Safavi is an improv kid and your biggest fan. She runs the Ubergroup, a 501(c)3 nonprofit providing low-cost fine arts education for adults. The Ubergroup offers university-level coursework, support, and networking for all writing-related art formats (including but not limited to: commercial and literary novels, stage and screen plays, short fiction, comics, nonfiction and academic, podcasts and webseries, picture books, poetry, IP writing, and some writing-adjacent arts such as acting and illustration) at a pace suitable for adults with full-time jobs and families. Alumni of the Ubergroup enjoy access to table reads for spec scripts, peer development of unsold work, and help editing projects under contract to meet agent/editor/producer requirements. The Ubergroup accepts writers in the English language from around the globe. Check out theubergroup.org for more.

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M

The author of eight novels and two short story collections, Richard Dansky is widely regarded as a leading expert on video game narrative and writing. He has written for franchises including The Division, Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, and many others, and was also a key contributor to White Wolf’s classic World of Darkness horror RPG setting. His upcoming projects include the novel Nightmare Logic from Falstaff Dread, the graphic novel Bridgewater from Delcourt, and the nonfiction book The Video Game Writer’s Guide To Surviving an Industry That Hates You.

This story is original to StarShipSofa

Narration by: Kevin Craybould

Kevin Craybould is a newly emerging writer and actor with a background in tech. His upcoming techno thriller Who is Sarah Smith is due out from Ever After Books in 2027. Find him at Metaphors are Lies (kcraybould.substack.com). He also reviews for Bookstack (newbooks.substack.co ). He is a proud alumni of the Ubergroup, an educational non-profit that provides college-level writing courses for working adults, and recommends anyone who wants to learn to write check them out: theubergroup.org

Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis

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Robert Guffey is a lecturer in the Department of English at California State University – Long Beach. His books include The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook (Madness Heart Press, 2024), Cryptopolis & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2024), Dead Monkey Rum (Planet Bizarro Press, 2023), Operation Mindfuck (OR Books, 2022), Widow of the Amputation & Other Weird Crimes (Eraserhead Press, 2021), Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Crossroad Press, 2021), Until the Last Dog Dies (Night Shade/Skyhorse, 2017), Chameleo (OR Books, 2015), and Spies & Saucers (PS Publishing, 2014). A graduate of the famed Clarion Writers Workshop in Seattle, he's written for numerous publications, among them The Believer, The Evergreen Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Mailer Review, Rosebud, Salon.com, and TOR.com. In 2024 he was nominated for the prestigious Andrew Carnegie Award for his nonfiction work investigating extremist rightwing movements such as QAnon and Christian Nationalism. Forthcoming from Headpress is his nonfiction cinema book, Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos, which covers one hundred years of film history. His website is Cryptoscatology.com.

This story originally appeared in Flurb #7, 2009.

Narrated by: Doni Nicoll-Duir

Doni Nicoll-Duir (nickel-dar) is originally from the Western Slope of Colorado. He has lived in and out of Arizona his whole life and now finds himself settling down in Tucson, AZ. Doni works in the renewable energy sector as a design engineer and permitting specialist. When Doni isn’t working on saving the planet, one rooftop at a time, or trying to keep up with his teenage daughter, he can be found cooking, hiking or playing board games with his friends at one of the local breweries.

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Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer with over five hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages. He has published several science fiction novels including two trilogies, six monster books, a dark military fantasy and a thriller. His short fiction is collected in Thin Air (2023), Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019), Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011).

In 2019, Gustavo was awarded second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and in 2018 he received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award. He was also a 2019 finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest.

His website is at www.gustavobondoni.com

This story is original to StarShipSofa.

Narrated by: Alethea Kontis

Alethea Kontis is an actress, storm chaser, and New York Times bestselling author. She has received the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She was twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and Dragon Award. Alethea narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and does freelance work for Writing the Other. Born in Vermont, Alethea currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida where she watches K-dramas with her teddy bear, Charlie. Together they are ARMY, VVS, and Black Roses.

Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis

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Hugo- and Nebula nominated author Marie Vibbert’s short fiction has appeared over 90 times in top magazines like Nature, Analog, and Clarkesworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award and her work has been called “everything science fiction should be” by the Oxford Culture Review. She also writes poetry, comics, and computer games. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio.

This story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2019.

Narrated by: Christina Rau

Christina M. Rau, The Yoga Poet, leads Meditate, Move, & Create workshops for various organizations in person and online. Her collections include How We Make Amends, What We Do To Make Us Whole, and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts. She moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. During her downtime, she watches the Game Show Network. http://www.christinamrau.com

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Libby Cudmore is the author of The Big Rewind (William Morrow 2016) and Negative Girl (Datura 2024) as well as the Wade & Jacks series in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine, and Tough. Her work has been published in Orca, Dark Waters, Stone's Throw and the Anthony Award-nominated Lawyers Guns & Money: Crime Fiction Inspired By the Songs of Warren Zevon, which she co-edited with Art Taylor.

She is the recipient of the Eleventh Hour Innaugural Literary Prize, the Shamus Award and the Black Orchid Novella Prize, as well as a finalist for the 2025 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Standalone Mystery.

This story originally appeared in Orca, A Literary Journal, #13, Spring/Summer 2023.

Narrated by: Theo Kipnis

Theo Kipnis sits slowly in a red and pink room, not choosing, not doing. Horseshoes and dominoes line the casements and built-in shelves, on which framed pictures cherish quiet images of ancestors and cartoon cats. Again and again, he slows in the small room, feeling the steady shadow around him drip through his vision. He has wings on his tongue and a tiny, pumping heart in each eye socket. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis

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Alex Shvartsman (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of Kakistocracy (2023), The Middling Affliction (2022), and Eridani’s Crown (2019) fantasy novels. Over 120 of his stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, et al. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and was a three-time finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction.

His translations from Russian have appeared in F&SF, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Analog, Asimov’s, et al. Alex has edited over a dozen anthologies, including the long-running Unidentified Funny Objects series.

This story originally appeared in Galaxy's Edge, no. 25, March 2017.

Narrated by: Will Stagl

Will Stagl lives in Tucson Arizona and is a proud member of the StarShipSofa team. This month you'll likely find him tearing through The Devils by Joe Abercrombie at a local café or waiting for the next installment of Murderbot to air.

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