SIM KERN is a Gulf Coast author and environmental journalist writing about climate change, queer identity, and social justice. Their debut horror novella, DEPART, DEPART!, was selected for the Honor List for the 2020 Otherwise Award. Their short story collection, REAL SUGAR IS HARD TO FIND, was hailed in a starred review by PUBLISHERS WEEKLY as, “a searing, urgent, but still achingly tender work that will wow any reader of speculative fiction.” As a journalist, they report on petrochemical polluters and drag space billionaires. March 2023 will see publication of their YA scifi novel SEEDS FOR THE SWARM, and later in the year their novel THE FREE PEOPLE'S VILLAGE will be published with Levine Querido.

AVI SILVER is a speculative fiction author (Sãoni Cycle), the Co-Editor-in-Chief of AUGUR MAGAZINE, and a poet with an honorable mention from the Rhysling Awards. Find their short fiction in COMMON BONDS: AN AROMANTIC SPECULATIVE ANTHOLOGY and NOTHING WITHOUT US TOO. His poetry has been published in STRANGE HORIZONS and UNCANNY MAGAZINE. In 2018, they co-founded The Shale Project, an award-winning indie arts collective, and have not stopped worldbuilding since. PLURALITIES, their big trans slipstream-means-space-opera novella, will be out this October with Atthis Arts. For more information, visit mxavisilver.com. For lizard pictures, follow him on Twitter @thescreambean.

Sim Kern discussing SEEDS FOR THE SWARM, with Avi Silver