Morgan Barca (formerly Chalut) has been writing since she learned that anyone was allowed to do that; it wasn’t illegal or anything! While it didn’t slow down her talking, it has led her to excel at making friends and finding new things to learn about. She has been steadily working her way through the delicious variety of non-fiction works in existence to create a Culture Creation Workshop that is her most recent pride and joy. Check out her Unwoven Tapestry trilogy at Amazon, and reach out about developing your worlds!
Morgan lives with her sister in Dallas, Texas. She has two dogs: Caramel, who absolutely wants to be your friend, and Sammie, who very definitely does not.William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with three novels and more than seventy speculative fiction short stories and non-fiction articles published in five languages, in publications such as Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Escape Pod and the SFWA blog.
He’s been a space and technology geek since childhood and spent most of his non-writing career in the aerospace industry. He lives near Dallas with his wife, a needy dog, and three spoiled cats.A Guatemalan-Anglo American, Rebecca Balcárcel is the award-winning author of SHINE ON, LUZ VÉLIZ! and THE OTHER HALF OF HAPPY, as well as a contributor to Highlights magazine and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Rebecca loves popcorn, her kitty, and teaching her students as an Associate Professor of English at Tarrant County College.Richard J. Gonzales wrote non-fiction Raza Rising: Chicanos in North Texas, released in March 2016, (University of North Texas Press) and historical fiction, Deer Dancer, July 2107 (Sleeping Panther Press). He penned a Fort Worth Star-Telegram op-ed column for six years. Currently he writes a monthly column about Fort Worth Latino history. Two short stories appeared in the Americas Review, literary journal of the University of Houston. LatinoAuthor.Com listed Gonzales as the number one author for non-fiction in 2016. He currently is a member of the All Writers Online Workshop and Hispanic Organization for Genealogy and Research (HOGAR).Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam is the author of the horror novel Grim Root, the short story collection Where You Linger & Other Stories, and the horror novella Glorious Fiends. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in over 90 publications such as Popular Science, Lightspeed, and LeVar Burton Reads, as well as in six languages. By night, she’s a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award. By day, she works as a Narrative Designer writing for a mobile game. She lives in Texas with her partner and a mysterious number of cats.William “Bud” R. Humble is a native Texan who’s been writing for longer than he feels comfortable admitting. Though he’s dabbled in other literary areas, his love of speculative fiction keeps drawing him back.Rhonda Eudaly lives in Arlington, Texas, with her husband and two dogs. She’s currently a full-time government employee using all her hard-earned skills. She has a well-rounded publication history in both fiction and non-fiction many of which can be found on her website.Writing from coffee houses and bars wherever he finds himself (these days, usually Denton), Jon Black specializes in historical fiction, usually with supernatural, horror, or pulp elements. Jon is best known for his Bel Nemeton series, a quirky reimagining of Arthurian mythology set in 6th century Britain. His novel, Gabriel’s Trumpet, a music-driven 1920s supernatural mystery hopping between the great cities of Jazz Age America, was voted Best Horror Novel of 2019 in the Critters Readers’ Choice Poll. Michelle Muenzler, known at local science fiction and fantasy conventions as “the Cookie Lady”, writes fiction both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking. Her short fiction and poetry can be read in magazines such as Daily Science Fiction, Liminality, and Fireside, and she takes immense joy in crinkling words like little foil puppets. If you are feeling especially brave, take a peek at her novella The Hills of Meat, the Forest of Bone on Amazon. She promises it won’t bite. Much.Lucas and Bethany Tucker are the co-owners of Scribal Work Shop, a company focusing on recreation of historic products and materials using historic methods and and leveraging some modern methods to produce historic products. An early lover of calligraphy, Lucas began practicing calligraphy at age ten. He became interested in medieval and renaissance era calligraphy and illumination styles sometime later.
Bethany Tucker works for Scribal Work Shop as a general customer service henchperson who sometimes makes stuff. She’s been working at Scarborough Renaissance Festival since 2012, which has essentially functioned as an excuse to dress up and talk about useless historic facts with complete strangers for the last decade or so, something generally frowned on at Target (unless it’s Halloween night, which is a really small window to work with).D. G. Swain is an artist and writer in Fort Worth, Texas. She’s been writing almost nonstop since she was fourteen years old, which explains her massive forearms. She specializes in neurodiversity research, speculative fiction, and exploring under-represented populations in media. She has two books out currently: Thiside of Anywhere, a 30-story anthology cycle about the daily lives of cryptids; and Throwback, series of explorations of the question, “If you could do the 2010s all over again, what would you change?”Sam Nash is a playwright and performer, currently focusing on educational presentations in schools and libraries. A Play on Swords is a theatrical company providing educational entertainment to educational venues. Costumed characters for historical and educational presentations.Mark A. Nobles has written one nonfiction book, Fort Worth’s Rock & Roll Roots, for Arcadia Press, and his first novel, We’re for Smoke, was published by TCU Press in the Fall of 2021. Mark’s novella, Chalk Mountain Stories, will be published by D&M Press in the spring of 2024. He is a Pushcart nominee, and his short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Cowboy Jamboree, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Gimmick Press, Road Kill Vol. 4, Not One of Us, The Esthetic Apostle, Curating Alexandria, and Cleaver. Mark is a sixth-generation Texan born on Fort Worth’s infamous Jacksboro Highway and proudly claims blood and kinship with Thunder Road’s gamblers, outlaws, and wastrels. He lives in Fort Worth but hopes to die in the desert.Chris Irby began his storytelling career at the age of 12, when he collaborated with his childhood friend Sean Freeman to produce a number of epic Super-8 movies, most of which featured robots, wizards, and/or prodigious amounts of blood spray. He and Sean would go on to collaborate on writing plays for The Pocket Sandwich Theater. Their first effort, the Great Escape from Stalag 18, hit the stage in 2006. Together, they’ve written a total of 8 plays for the Pocket, including the Legend of Deadeye Mary (which was nominated for several Column Awards in 2019, including the Steve Lovett Award for Outstanding New Work by a Local Playwright). When he’s not writing plays, Chris enjoys drinking bourbon and patiently explaining to people on the internet why they’re wrong.Mark Finn is an author, editor, game designer and pop culture critic. His writing can be found in various RPG zines, comics, books, anthologies, and elsewhere online courtesy of his fictitious North Texas Apocalypse Bunker. When he’s not waxing passionate about popular culture or Robert E. Howard, Finn writes stories, publishes cool stuff, and performs community theater. He lives in North Texas over a historic movie theater with his high school sweetheart and an embarrassing excess of books.Wendy Wheeler is a Texas writer and instructor in writing craft whose work has appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. Her fiction ranges from adult fairytale anthologies (Silver Birch, Blood Moon; Snow White, Blood Red — edited by Datlow/Windling), magical alternate history anthologies (The Crafters, both Volumes I and II), Analog, Aboriginal SF, Daily SF, horror magazines (Gorezone) and many others. She’s also won awards for her screenplays and does freelance story development for Hollywood.Roux36 is an art consultant and pinch-hitter talent who may or may not be in attendance this year. He produces quite a lot of nerdy YouTube content and is exploring life as a book cover art designer.Amber Royer is the author of the Chocoverse space opera series and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She teaches creative writing and is an author coach. Amber and her husband live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area, where you can often find them hiking or taking landscape/architecture/wildlife photographs. Amber blogs about creative writing technique and all things chocolate on her website.
