Join us to hear new work from some of Austin’s leading writers of fantastic literature! Get a sneak preview at what’s coming up for Austin’s science fiction and fantasy authors, just in time for ArmadilloCon 2018. Featuring Patrice Sarath, Christopher Brown, Stina Leicht, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Jessica Reisman, Robert Ashcroft, and Amanda Downum.

Patrice Sarath is an author and editor living in Austin, Texas. Her novels include the fantasy books The Sisters Mederos (Book I of the Tales of Port Saint Frey), the series Books of the Gordath (Gordath Wood, Red Gold Bridge, and The Crow God’s Girl) and the romance The Unexpected Miss Bennet. Patrice’s numerous short stories have appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including Weird Tales, Black Gate, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and many others. Her short story “A Prayer for Captain La Hire” was included in Year’s Best Fantasy of 2003 compiled by David Hartwell and Katherine Cramer. Her story “Pigs and Feaches,” originally published in Apex Digest, was reprinted in 2013 in Best Tales of the Apocalypse by Permuted Press.

Christopher Brown is the author of Tropic of Kansas, which was a finalist for the 2018 Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of the year. His novel Rule of Capture, the beginning of a series of speculative legal thrillers, is forthcoming from Harper in 2019. He was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for the anthology Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (Small Beer Press, 2012). His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including MIT Technology Review’s Twelve Tomorrows, The Baffler, Reckoning, Sunspot Jungle, and Stories for Chip. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he also practices technology law.

Stina Leicht is a two-time Campbell Award nominee for Best New Writer and a Crawford Award finalist. Her novel Cold Iron debuted in 2015. Two other Fantasy novels, Of Blood and Honey and its sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain, are set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Her feminist essays were featured in the Hugo Award winning Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Her latest novel is Blackthorne, the follow up to Cold Iron, part of a flintlock fantasy series for Simon and Schuster’s Saga Press. She is currently working on a feminist SF novel titled Persephone Station, also for Saga.

Marshall Ryan Maresca is a fantasy and science-fiction writer, author of the Maradaine novels: The Thorn of Dentonhill, A Murder of Mages, The Alchemy of Chaos, An Import of Intrigue, TheHolver Alley Crew, The Imposters of Aventil, Lady Henterman’s Wardrobe and the forthcoming The Way of the Shield. His work also appeared in Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction and Rick Klaw’s anthology Rayguns Over Texas. He also has had several short plays produced. He lives in Austin with his family, where he cooks too well and eats too many carbs.

Jessica Reisman grew up on the east coast of the U.S., was a teenager on the west coast, and now lives in Austin, Texas. She dropped out of high school, but has a master’s degree. She’s been a writer, animal lover, devoted reader, and movie aficionado since she was a wee child. Her science fiction adventure novel Substrate Phantoms came out in 2017; she has stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies.

Robert Ashcroft, trained as cryptologic linguist, has worked as a State Department contractor and was recently mobilized to serve abroad with the US Army Reserve. His debut novel, The Megarothke, was published this past February 27th by Cinestate, a Dallas-based entertainment company.

Amanda Downum is the author of the Necromancer Chronicles, available from Orbit Books, and Dreams of Shreds & Tatters, from Solaris. Her short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales, and has recently been collected in Still So Strange, published by Chizine Press. She lives in Austin, where she can often be found in absinthe bars, goth clubs, climbing gyms, and other liminal spaces. Her day job sometimes lets her dress as a giant worm.