Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2020 Edition

G. V. Anderson is a speculative fiction author whose short stories have won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, and been nominated for a Nebula Award. Her work can be found in Strange Horizons and Lightspeed, as well as anthologies such as The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. She resides in Dorset, UK, and is currently writing her first novel.

KATHARINE DUCKETT’s fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Apex Magazine, Interzone, PseudoPod, and various anthologies. She is also the guest fiction editor for the Disabled People Destroy Fantasy issue of Uncanny. She hails from East Tennessee, has lived in Turkey and Kazakhstan, and attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she majored in minotaurs. Miranda in Milan is her first book. In addition to writing, Katharine works as the Publicity Manager for Tor.com Publishing. She currently resides in Brooklyn with her wife.

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

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of fifteen novels and six story collections. He has received numerous awards, including the NEA Literature Fellowship in fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the This Is Horror Award, as well as making Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels of the Year. Stephen was raised in West Texas. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and children.

Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and a speculative fiction writer. He is the author of the debut novel The Hospital at the End of the World and the story collection The World Wasn’t Ready for You. His stories have appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Lightspeed, and on Tor.com. He received a BA in biology from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

NAOMI KRITZER has been re-reading favorite books since childhood, and probably still has passages from A Wrinkle in Time memorized. She writes for both adults and teens, including Catfishing on CatNet and Chaos on CatNet from Tor Teen and Liberty's Daughter from Fairwood Press. Her writing has won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Award, the Locus Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. Naomi lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her family and three cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.

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.

S. Qiouyi Lu writes and translates between two coasts of the Pacific. Ær work, including fiction, poetry, and essays, has appeared in several award-winning venues. In the Watchful City is ær first novella. You can find out more about S. at ær website or on Twitter.

Melissa Marr writes fiction for adults, teens, and children. Her books have been translated into twenty-eight languages and been bestsellers in the US (NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal) as well as overseas. Wicked Lovely, her debut novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and evolved into an internationally bestselling multibook series. Over the last two decades, she's also published middle grade (The Hidden Knife), adult fiction (Graveminder), picture books (Bunny Roo, I Love You), and comics (The Strange Case of Harleen and Harley). If she's not writing, you can probably find her in a kayak or on a trail with her wife.

With her groundbreaking novel, China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade's best science fiction writers. She is the winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee.

Tamsyn Muir is a horror, fantasy and science fiction writer. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Locked Tomb series. Her short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, F&SF, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, and Clarkesworld. She has won the Locus and Crawford awards, and been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Dragon Award, and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.

C. L. Polk wrote the Hugo-nominated Kingston Cycle, including the World Fantasy Award-winning Witchmark. They are also the author of the CBC Canada Reads finalist The Midnight Bargain and the Nebula-winning, USA Today bestseller Even Though I Knew The End.

Before writing fantasy novels, they worked as a film extra, a costermonger, and also identified lepidoptera by eye. Mx. Polk lives in Calgary, on the territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3).

Matthew Pridham was born in New Jersey and spent his childhood chasing trolls in Bergen, Norway. He has since mostly lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After working 13 years as a bookseller, he succumbed to the glittering allure of academia and earned degrees in philosophy, literature, and creative writing. His haunted house novella, “Renovations,” was printed in Weird Tales magazine issue 348, his film criticism has been published in WeirdFictionReview.com, and he’s written fiction and nonfiction for The Thought Erotic. He is currently at work on a novel.

Rachel Swirsky lives in Portland, Oregon, where she roams happily under overcast skies with the hipsters. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Asimov’s, and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Her fiction has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award, and twice won the Nebula Award. Her books include Placed into Abyss (Mise en Abyse) and A Memory of Wind.

K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with a small dog and long cat. He is the author of speculative novels such as FIRST, BECOME ASHES (2021), DOCILE (2020), and a novel that will follow up on his Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time." They're about cults and trauma, consent and debt, and a horny trans vampire, respectively. His short fiction appears in Tor.com, Uncanny, Lightspeed, and more. You can find himme on the Internet at kmszpara.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @kmszpara.

Carrie Vaughn survived her air force brat childhood and managed to put down roots in Colorado. Her first book, Kitty and the Midnight Hour, launched a popular series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk-radio advice show. She is also the author of Voices of Dragons, her debut novel for teen readers. Ms. Vaughn lives in Colorado.

Fran Wilde’s books include her Nebula and Compton Crook award–winning debut Updraft and the Nebula award–winning, Best of NPR selection Riverland. Her fiction has appeared in numerous publications and “best of” anthologies. She teaches at colleges and MFA programs nationwide; edits fiction for the Sunday Morning Transport; writes nonfiction for publications including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NPR.org; and hoards both fountain pens and ink. You can find her at Franwilde.net.