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Audris Candra is a queer Chinese-Indonesian writer, editor, and co-founder of #APIPit, the first Twitter pitch event created to elevate Asian and Pacific Islander creators. As a klenik (something akin to a shaman), they're too haunted for their own good so they find refuge in being a certified weirdo who loves their IKEA shark maybe a little bit too much. Tehnuka (she/they) is a Tamil writer and volcanologist from Aotearoa New Zealand. She likes to find herself up volcanoes, down caves, and in unexpected places. Some of her recent speculative works appear in Reckoning, Apex, and Uncanny. She is the 2023 winner of the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent in New Zealand science fiction and fantasy. Mary Zambales is a 1.5 generation Filipino American living in the Bay Area. Her hobbies outside of reading and writing include baking, watching K-dramas, and dumpster-diving social media. While not sticking to any one genre or age group, all her stories center Filipino main characters. Charlie is a twenty-three-year-old amateur writer and Chinese adoptee. As a fun fact, they have a sister and two cousins also adopted from China! They’re obsessed with putting Lee Kum Kee char sui sauce on things, and is sure their housemate is sick of their one cooking style: questionable fusion. They currently live in Cambridge, England, mostly found coffee shop hopping along the Cam, or exploring the poppy field that's suddenly appeared on their usual run. Mirha (she/her) is a Kashmiri Muslim, currently living in London and studying towards a Geography degree alongside writing unapologetically desi novels with diverse casts, important social issues and a lot of love (and pain). Her greatest joy is being able to put mental health perseverance, nuanced female characters (intersectional feminism FTW!) and religious characters in her work. When she’s not colouring in maps or typing away, she can be found watching Bollywood films, swapping identities with her identical twin-sister, and seeking out academic validation. L Chan hails from Singapore. He spends most of his time wrangling a team of two dogs, Mr Luka and Mr Telly. His work has appeared in places like Clarkesworld, Translunar Travellers Lounge, Podcastle, the Dark and he was a finalist for the 2020 Eugie Foster Memorial Award. Nathanael (he/him) is a Chinese Singaporean with a long-time passion for creative writing. He has written mainly fanfiction on and off for close to ten years, and this is one of his first forays into creating an entirely original story and characters. He excels at high action sequences, particularly in techno-thrillers, but has no qualms with dipping his toes into the horror/supernatural genre. His other primary interests include heavy metal and punk music, prehistoric wildlife, and left-wing politics, all of which have been or will be featured in his writing at some point. May is a South Asian Muslim author from London, and a psychoanalysis Masters graduate. She writes gothic fiction and dark fantasy, and has previously appeared in “When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead” in 2022. She is currently querying her personal masterpiece - her gothic, dark fantasy novel. Her literature preferences lean more towards the dark and sometimes literary, with an unusual affinity for eerie tragedies or the viscerally uncomfortable. Bonus points for psychological elements - particularly anything referencing Jung. Marwa is a Turkish-American hijabi writer, and has a short story out in “When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead” with Haunt Publishing. She writes primarily SFF with gothic elements, and has 2 cats. Katalina is a Filipino-British author of speculative fiction and gothic horror.
