Rick Kleffel:Narrative Species–The Agony Column Creators & Guests

Rachel Swirsky is an author of literary, speculative, and fantasy fiction and poetry, and an editor. She was the founding editor of the PodCastle podcast and was its editor from 2008 to 2010. She was vice president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2013.Swirsky's work has been published in PANK, the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and the New Haven Review. Her speculative fiction work has appeared in Tor.com, Subterranean Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, and collected in a variety of year's best anthologies. Her novella "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window" won the 2010 Nebula Award. Her short story "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" won the 2013 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

Joseph Edward "Jay" Lake, Jr. was a science fiction and fantasy writer.Lake lived in Portland and worked as a product manager for a voice services company. His work appeared in Postscripts, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Asimov's Science Fiction, Nemonymous, and the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. He was an editor for the "Polyphony" anthology series from Wheatland Press, and was also a contributor to The Internet Review of Science Fiction.Lake died on June 1, 2014.

Amelia H. Beamer is a book editor, writer, and writing mentor. She specializes in science fiction and fantasy. Currently, she is President of her own author company, Beaming Enterprises.Previously, Beamer was and editor for Locus Science Fiction.Beamer's work has appeared in Lady Churchill's Robot* Wristlet, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, and Uncanny Magazine, as well as in anthologies. Her first novel, "The Loving Dead," was published in 2010.

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, was an author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries. She is best known for her Inspector Wexford series. She made a significant contribution to the genre by publishing novels that explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims. Some of her work was published under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.Rendell's first novel, "From Doon with Death," which was also her first Inspector Wexford novel, was published in 1964. Over the course of career, she published more than 65 novels, as well as story collections and non-fiction works.Rendell died in 2015.

Laird Samuel Barron is an author and poet, mostly of horror, noir, and dark fantasy fiction.In Alaska, Barron raced the Iditarod three times in the 1990s and worked as a fisherman on the Bering Sea. He began writing professionally in 1994. He was the Managing Editor of the online literary magazine Melic Review.He has stated his affection for pulp fiction, westerns, and noir, and his work typically combines one or more of these elements with a horrific or weird supernatural intrusion. Barron has referred to the Bible and the Necronomicon as "the greatest horror stories ever told."[6]Barron's fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCI FICTION, Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Lovecraft Unbound, Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, and The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as in numerous year's best anthologies.Barron received the 2007 and 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards for his collections "The Imago Sequence and Other Stories" and "Occultation and Other Stories." His first novel, "The Light is the Darkness," was published in 2011.

Kim James Newman is a journalist, film critic, and horror fiction writer.Newman began his career as a playwright, then as a film critic for "City Limits" and "Venue." He became a regular film reviewer on BBC Radio's "Kaleidoscope" and on television. In the meantime, he was writing and selling fiction, and his first novel, "The Night Mayor," was published in 1989.Newman's work has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the BSFA award.Newman received his B.A. in English from the University of Sussex

Jeff Goodell is an American author and contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. His writings are known for a focus on energy and environmental issues.

Ken Silverstein is a journalist. Currently, he is editor-in-chief at Washington Babylon.Silverstein has worked for the Los Angeles Times as an investigative reporter, for The Associated Press in Brazil, and has written for Mother Jones, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Slate, and Salon and Harper's Magazine.In 1993, Silverstein founded the newsletter CounterPunch. In 2016, he launched the website Washington Babylon.Silverstein received his B.A. from Evergreen State College.

John Shirley is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, and songs. He has also written historical fiction, western fiction, and non-fiction book.Shirley has written novels, short stories, TV scripts, and screenplays. He has published over 70 books and 8 short-story collections. His first novel, "Transmaniacon," was published in 1979.As a musician, Shirley has fronted bands and written lyrics for other bands.

Ann Leckie is a science fiction and fantasy writer.Leckie's work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny Magazine, Forever, Helix, Realms of Fantasy, Lightspeed, PodCastle, and in anthologies. Her first novel, "Ancillary Justice," was published in 2013 and won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel," the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award.

Cory Efram Doctorow is a blogger, journalist, and science fiction author. He serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing.

Tananarive Priscilla Due is an American author and educator best known as a film historian with expertise in Black horror.

Andy Greenberg is a technology journalist. He is currently a senior writer at Wired Magazine and author of the book Sandworm.

Daryl Gregory is a science fiction, fantasy, and comic book author, and a teacher.Gregory's first novel, "Pandemonium," was published in 2008 and won the 2009 Crawford Award for best first fantasy novel. Gregory received his B.A. in English and Theater from Illinois State University. He is an Clarion Workshop.

Mark Arax is a journalist and nonfiction author who writes about California.Arax was a staffer at the Los Angeles Times, and left in 2007 after a public fight over censorship of his story on the Armenian Genocide. He has taught literary non fiction at Claremont McKenna College and Fresno State University.Arax's work has appeared in The New York Times and the California Sunday Magazine.His first book, a memoir of his father's murder, "In My Father's Name," was published in 1997. His second book, "The King of California," was published in 2005, won a California Book Award, the William Saroyan Prize from Stanford University, and was named a top book of 2004 by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. His most recent book, "The Dreamt Land" was published in 2019.Arax received his degrees from Fresno State and Columbia University.

Dacher Keltner is a Professor of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley, where he directs the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab. He is also the founder and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and host of the podcast The Science of Happiness.

Timothy Shiou-Ming Wu is a legal scholar and professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in antitrust, copyright, and telecommunications law. He is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.Wu is best known for having coined the term "network neutrality." He has advocated for an antitrust break-up of Facebook. He also served as a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, and on the National Economic Council during the Obama Administration.Wu has written three books and co-edited a fourth. His most recent book, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age," was published in 2018.Wu received his B.Sc from MgGill University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Alyxandra Margaret Dellamonica is writer of science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history fiction. Currently, they are a Communications Officer at the University of Toronto.Dellamonica has published over forty short stories in the field since the 1980s in Crank!, Terminal Fright, Tomorrow, Realms of Fantasy, Tesseracts, Asimov's Science Fiction, and in anthologies. Their first book, "Indigo Springs," was published in 2009. They also review science fiction novels and write articles about publishing for science fiction related websites like Clarkesworld and for tor.com.

Lauren Beukes is a novelist, short story writer, journalist and television scriptwriter.Before becoming a full-time writer, Beukes worked as a freelance journalist for ten years.Beukes has written for the comics "Survivors’ Club," "Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom," and "Trouble With Cats." She has published 8 books.