Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2015

Nino Cipri is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator. They are a graduate of the 2014 Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and earned their MFA in fiction from the University of Kansas. A multidisciplinary artist, Nino has also written plays, screenplays, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer. They are the author of Homesick, a World Fantasy Award finalist and Dzanc Short Fiction Collection Prize winner, and the novellas Finna, a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Lambda awards, and Defekt, a British Fantasy Award winner and finalist for the Philip K. Dick and Locus awards. Dead Girls Don't Dream is their young adult debut.

SETH DICKINSON is the author of the Baru Cormorant novels and many short stories, as well as much of the lore and backstory of Bungie Studios' Destiny. Seth lives in New York City.

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, the Edgar Award–winning The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, The Shadow Year, and The Twilight Pariah, and his collections include The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, and A Natural History of Hell. He lives near Columbus, Ohio, and teaches writing at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Yoon Ha Lee is the author of several critically acclaimed short stories and the Machineries of Empire trilogy for adults: Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem, and Revenant Gun. Yoon draws inspiration from a variety of sources including Korean history and mythology, fairy tales, higher mathematics, classic moral dilemmas, and genre fiction.

Maria Dahvana Headley is a New York Times bestselling novelist, memoirist, and editor, most recently of Magonia, Queen of Kings, and the anthology Unnatural Creatures (coeditor with Neil Gaiman). Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards. She lives in Brooklyn in an apartment with a seven-foot stuffed crocodile and constellations on the ceiling. You can find her at www.mariadahvanaheadley.com

Kameron Hurley is the Hugo Award-winning author of The Light Brigade, The Stars Are Legion, the Worldbreaker Saga, and other titles. In addition to winning the Locus Award, Kitschy Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award, her work has also been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, Dragon Award, Gemmell Morningstar Award, and Ohio Book Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Popular Science, Lightspeed, and numerous anthologies. Hurley has also written for The Atlantic, Writer's Digest, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, Bitch, and Locus Magazine. Find her online at KameronHurley.com.

Dr Michael Livingston is a Citadel Distinguished Professor and teaches the military and cultural history of the Middle Ages at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. In 2024 he was shortlisted for the Crown Award for Agincourt: Battle of the Scarred King. He co-authored the textbook reader Medieval Warfare, winner of the 2020 Distinguished Book Prize. These add to previous books The Battle of Crécy: A Casebook, winner of the 2017 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History, Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England (Osprey, 2021), and Crécy: Battle of Five Kings (Osprey, 2021). He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and former Secretary-General for the United States Commission on Military History.

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. She is the Executive Director of Global Voices, a community of writers, editors, and translators providing community journalism from all over the world and advocating for indigenous and minority languages, media literacy, digital rights, and online freedom of expression. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named among the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, the Washington Post, and Book Riot; with sequels, it was a finalist for a Hugo award. The Mimicking of Known Successes, a murder mystery set on Jupiter, was on four best of 2023 lists and was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and Ignyte awards for Best Novella. The sequel, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, was named one of the best science-fiction books of 2024 by Esquire, and the third book in the series, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, comes out in June 2025. She is a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University, where she teaches on predictive fictions. She is co-editor of We Will Rise Again, an anthology of speculative fiction about social justice movements, coming out in December 2025.

Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952. After travelling and working around the world, he settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched scientific basis of his work. He has won just about every major sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and highly praised ‘Mars’ series.

BRIAN STAVELEY has taught literature, religion, history, and philosophy, and holds an MA in poetry from Boston University. His books, which have been translated into over a dozen languages, include The Empire's Ruin, The Emperor's Blades, The Providence of Fire, The Last Mortal Bond, and Skullsworn. He lives in Vermont and divides his time between running trails, splitting wood, writing, and chasing his son downhill on a mountain bike.

Ray Wood was born in Wiltshire in 1990. He spent four years studying English and Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, during which time he studiously managed to avoid writing anything that didn't have at least one sword or spaceship in it. He graduated with an MA in 2013 and currently lives in Surrey with his girlfriend. He is working on completing his first novel.