ego_bot is a human writer who is confident we’re going to make it through all this. His self-published collection, There’s Something Weird Going On: Ten Stories of Existentialist Science Fiction, contains science fiction stories of a more optimistic nature. He is most active on Bluesky.
Nathan Ehret tends to follow a rigorous daily routine of procrastination. Sometimes, though, a story manages to sneak onto his laptop when he’s looking the other way. He’s fascinated by the unusual and maintains a healthy disdain for the practical. He lives, edits, and teaches English in Vancouver, Canada, and his other stories have been known to end up in places like Perihelion and Electric Spec.
Serah Eley is the original producer, editor and host of Escape Pod. She mispronounced her name as Steve Eley at the time, but has since realized that life is much more fun as a woman, and came out as transgender in 2015. Serah lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her two spouses (she prefers “spice”), Sadi and Cat.
So if there were ever any betting pools on what happened to Steve: the dark-horse winner is “changed sex and joined a committed lesbian love triangle.” She is, obviously, still Having Fun.
Petra Elliott is an actor, singer and presenter, who currently spends most days as a game facilitator for Directors of Extraordinary and Great Race Australia, running team building events utilising escape room style puzzles and TV reality game show style challenges. In 2013 she co-hosted the Splendid Chaps podcast celebrating the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, which led to co-creating and starring in sci-fi time-travel comedy audio series Night Terrace (as heard on BBC Radio 4 Extra). Theatre highlights include Sissy (then) in Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Eve Ensler in The Vagina Monologues, Emilia in Othello, Belinda/Flavia in Noises Off, M’lynn in Steel Magnolias. Musicals including Godspell, Cabaret and Les Miserablés, multiple roles in He Died With a Felafel In His Hand, the title role in Peter Pan, Inside Out at La Mama, and Who Killed John Bearington III? and the Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF). She debuted her first solo cabaret show, Petrasexual, in 2014 with return seasons at the Butterfly Club and Adelaide Fringe. In 2015 Petra played Joan Baez in The Road To Woodstock (Chapel Off Chapel) and filmed supernatural television drama Sonnigsburg, later nominated for Best Narrative and/or Fictional program at the 2019 Antenna Awards. As a puppeteer and improviser she was part of The Mighty Little Puppet Show, with multiple story formats at MICF, Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe festivals. The ABC invited her to appear on Whovians to discuss the Twelfth doctor’s performance in Oxygen, in an episode that aired on May 14, 2017.
Christiana Ellis is an award-winning writer and podcaster, currently living in Massachusetts. Her podcast novel, Nina Kimberly the Merciless was both an inaugural nominee for the 2006 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction: Long Form, as well as a finalist for a 2006 Podcast Peer Award. Nina Kimberly the Merciless is available in print from Dragon Moon Press. Christiana is also the writer, producer and star of Space Casey, a 10-part audiodrama miniseries which won the Gold Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Production by the American Society for Science Fiction Audio and the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Drama. In between major projects, Christiana is also the creator and talent of many other podcast productions including Talking About Survivor, Hey, Want to Watch a Movie? and Christiana’s Shallow Thoughts. Her most recent novel: Phyllis Esposito: Interdimensional Private Eye is now available as both print and ebook. All her work can be found at christianaellis.com.
Matt Ellis is a reformed Army intelligence officer and diplomat paying his dues with freelance interviews and literary criticism while grinding it out as a crime and thriller writer. He’s a 2021/2022 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critic Fellow and holds an MFA in Fiction at the University of California at Riverside’s Palm Desert program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. His work has been featured in Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Coachella Review, Thought Catalog, and Sein und Werden. He and his wife recently abandoned their newly emptied nest for a life of wandering as digital nomads. If you see them out in the world, flag them down and invite them for a drink.
Harold “Hal” Ellson (1910 – October 31, 1994) was an American author of pulp fiction whose work primarily focused on juvenile delinquency, a field in which he has been described as “one of the most popular” writers and as “legendary.”
Ellson was a social worker, recreational therapist, and nurse’s aide at Bellevue Hospital, where he encountered the adolescent psychiatric patients on whom he based much of his fiction; he subsequently stated that many of the patients viewed him as a “father confessor”, and eagerly told him their stories while trusting that he would not report them to law enforcement.
Harlan Ellison cited Hal Ellson’s work as having inspired his own interest in juvenile delinquency — an interest which led directly to the writing of Ellison’s first novel, Web of the City. Ellison also stated that in the earliest days of his career as a writer, he was often mistaken for Ellson writing under a pseudonym — and that decades later, when Ellison had become much more known and Ellson’s career had waned, Ellson was often mistaken for Ellison writing under a pseudonym.
Nicolas Escobar is a Registered Nurse in Seattle Washington. When he’s not working the night shift he’s at home with his wonderful wife Emily. He developed a passion for writing after attending a meeting of “The Notion Club” run by Professor Will Mari of Northwest University. Nicolas believes in spooks and thinks you should too. He is currently working on a horror novel called THE EMPEROR OF SEATTLE, which should be out in December 2016.