Tesseracts Twenty-Two (Alchemy and Artifacts)

Bev Geddes is a school-based speech/language pathologist, and author. Her short story, Living in Oz, appeared in the Aurora Award winning anthology, Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts (Laksa Media) and was also short-listed for the award, receiving an Honourable Mention in Gardner Dozois, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection for 2016. Her second story, The Gift, was published in the Aurora Award winning anthology, The Sum of Us (Laksa Media) in 2017. She has written non-fiction pieces for organizations such as Mood Disorders Association and Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Her speculative fiction novel, Secrets of Shalott, has recently been completed. When not reading, writing, or running away to her cabin on Lake Winnipeg, she enjoys playing the harp, aided and abetted by a menagerie of cats, dogs, children and chums.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Bianca Sayan works and hibernates in Toronto, Canada. During the day, she fiddles with code and spins yarns about a brave new world of data transparency. By night, she is losing the battle against her closet of hobbies. She spends a lot of time thinking how to make things better and is pretty antsy for the future to arrive.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Cat McDonald is an Edmonton-based author, editor, and game designer. Her short stories have appeared in Tesseracts Fifteen, and Here Be Monsters, and she co-edited The Dame Was Trouble. You can listen to her playing Invisible Sun on the podcast Truth Hidden Among Hearts, and she sometimes tweets using @CatlingGun. She is, it's safe to assume, up to something.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Chris Patrick Carolan is an author, editor, and hovercraft enthusiast whose stories have appeared in the Enigma Front anthology series, 49th Parallels: Alternative Canadian Histories and Futures, and Baby, It’s Cold Outside. He is Managing Editor of ExitZero Books and, at the time of this writing, was working on revisions to his first novel, a paranormal mystery set in 1880s Halifax, Nova Scotia.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Colleen Anderson’s 200 plus works have appeared in such venues as nEvermore!, Beauty of Death, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, OnSpec, Amazing and Cemetery Dance. She is a three-time Aurora nominee and has received honorable mentions for poetry and fiction. Her past includes book buyer, book rep, Chizine poetry editor, Vancouver ChiSeries host, Tesseracts 17 and Playground of Lost Toys co-editor, as well as freelance copy-editing. She has received a Canada Council grants for her writing. She edited Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, and Black Shuck Books, UK published her dark fiction collection A Body of Work.

[UPDATED 2019-05-06]

Erik Jon Spigel is a professor of the Humanities specializing in Japan, who also has background in pure and applied mathematics. He has lived in the United States, Japan, and Canada working as a language teacher, a translator, an academic, and currently as a software engineer. He learned math in German, literary and cultural theory in French, Modern Japanese in English, Classical Japanese in Modern Japanese, and Classical Chinese in Classical Japanese. Rarely in his adult life has he been where he is in his own head. He currently lives in Toronto with his wife, Rui.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Fiona Plunkett is a "mostly sane" freelance editor, researcher, and do-er of things. Born in England and transplanted to Canada's capital region by her Canadian parents, she now resides in the small town of South Mountain, Ontario with eight cats (full time), five skeletons (full time), and a "mostly sane" author (part time). She has a university degree in History, and a college diploma in Interactive Media Management. In her spare time, she plays the bagpipes, tenor drum, and bass drum (not all at the same time) for the Kemptville Legion, Branch 212, Pipes & Drums, carves soapstone, talks to cats, Steampunks, communes with nature in her backyard sanctuary, and terrorizes local children on Hallowe’en as The Witch of South Mountain.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Prior to writing fiction, Geoff Gander was heavily involved in the roleplaying community, and wrote many game products. He has been published by ChiZine Publications, Metahuman Press, AE SciFi, Exile Editions, McGraw-Hill, and Expeditious Retreat Press. He primarily writes horror, but is willing to give anything a whirl. In his spare time, he Steampunks, demolishes flooring, and wrangles two teenagers. Geoff lives in South Mountain with a lovely witch who carves soapstone and plays the bagpipes - not at the same time.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Startled by an aggressive dictionary during the 9th month of her pregnancy, Geoff’s mother was shortly delivered of a child who showed a precocious antipathy towards words. Over time, he transformed this antipathy into a more functional, if equally passive-aggressive, career as an editor. After more than 30 years of editing, the verbal flame still burns as brightly, leading to an errant, semi-evangelical career ranting against the evils of words from pulpits at any editing or technical writing conference that will have him, tirelessly seeking new recruits for his cause. In his spare time, he roams the globe, entertaining and enlightening locals with his creative and unrestrained interpretations of their linguistic conventions. He also commits occasional fictions, and at time of writing, has sold 21 stories.

[UPDATED 2020-07-10]

Halli Lilburn was born in Edmonton, Alberta.  Her first story at age nine was about unicorns and fairies. Over the years she has explored other genres including poetry, science fiction, paranormal and horror. She has works published with Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods, Spirited by Leap Books, Carte Blanche, Vine Leaves, Renaissance Press and many others.  She teaches workshops on creative writing and art journaling. She is a certified structural editor, a librarian, artist, and mother of three.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Holly Schofield travels through time at the rate of one second per second, oscillating between the alternate realities of city and country life. Her stories have appeared in such publications as Analog, Lightspeed, and Escape Pod, been used in university curricula, and been translated into several languages. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Jason Lane has lived in Whitehorse, Yukon, all his life except for occasional visits to the southern climes, always to gravitate back towards the pole when winter calls. Weird tales and fantasy are his lifelong loves but science fiction always has a special place in his heart. He is a huge fan of Ray Bradbury and Terry Pratchett, and when not writing, can be found perusing the local used bookshop or libraries. His works have appeared in several EDGE publications including Tesseracts 21.

[UPDATED 2019-07-22]

Kate Heartfield writes fantasy, science fiction and non-fiction, including the historical fantasy novels Armed in Her Fashion (ChiZine Publications 2018) and The Humours of Grub Street (ChiZine Publications 2020), and the time-travel novellas Alice Payne Arrives (Tor.com Publishing 2018) and Alice Payne Rides (Tor.com Publishing 2019). Her novella The Course of True Love was published by Abaddon Books in 2016. Choice of Games released her interactive novel, The Road to Canterbury, in 2018. A former newspaper journalist, Kate now teaches journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and is a freelance editor and writer.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Katherine Cameron was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. Her debut collection of poetry, Strange Labyrinth, was published in 2015. Her short stories and poems have appeared over fifty literary journals and anthologies, including The Antigonish Review, CV2, Descant, echolocation, The Fiddlehead, FreeFall, Grain, Queen’s Quarterly, NonBinary Review, Room, Prairie Fire, PRISM international, Beyond Forgetting: Celebrating 100 Years of Al Purdy, and 40 Below: Volume 2. She saw John Dee’s obsidian scrying mirror in the British Museum and his astrolabe in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Kurt Kirchmeier lives and writes in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His stories and poems have appeared in Abyss & Apex, Shimmer, Tesseracts 15, Weird Tales, and elsewhere. His debut novel The Absence of Sparrows (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) was published in 2019. When he isn’t reading or writing, Kurt can often be found outside, photographing nature. He has a particular fondness for birds.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Lara Apps has a PhD in History from the University of Alberta. She is the co-author, with Andrew Gow, of Male Witches in Early Modern Europe (Manchester University Press, 2003), and has also published scholarly articles on eighteenth-century witchcraft and atheism. She works for the Alberta Human Rights Commission and for Athabasca University. Her fiction has appeared in Bewildering Stories, SNAPLine, and Stories of the Nature of Cities.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Leslie Brown is an Ottawa-based writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror and romance. She has published short stories in On Spec, Neo Opsis, Strange Horizons, Tesseracts 15, Tesseracts 20 as well as other anthologies. She has recently retired from the National Research Council as a research technician in the field of Alzheimer’s disease.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Liz Westbrook-Trenholm has published or aired mainstream and speculative short fiction in Prix Aurora-winning or nominated anthologies, The Sum of Us, (Laksa Media), 49th Parallels (Bundoran Press) and Shades Within Us (Laksa Media) and in Over the Rainbow (Exile Press). Her story, Gone Flying, was long-listed for the Sunburst Award and won the Prix Aurora for best short form in 2018. She is a long-distance member of Calgary-based Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, and an at-home member of the East Block Irregulars writers’ group. She lives in Ottawa with her husband, writer and publisher, Hayden Trenholm.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Lorina Stephens has worked as an editor, freelance journalist for national and regional print media, is the author of seven books (fiction and non-fiction), been a festival organizer, publicist, lectured on many topics from historical textiles and domestic technologies to publishing and writing, teaches, and continues to work as a writer, artist, and publisher at Five Rivers Publishing. She has had several short fiction pieces published in Canada’s acclaimed On Spec Magazine, Postscripts to Darkness, Neo-Opsis, Deluge, Strangers Among Us, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s fantasy anthology Sword & Sorceress X. Her book credits include Caliban, Stonehouse Cooks, From Mountains of Ice, And the Angels Sang, and Shadow Song (Five Rivers Publishing), Recipes of a Dumb Housewife (Lulu Publishing), Credit River Valley, (Boston Mills Press), Touring the Giant’s Rib: A Guide to the Niagara Escarpment (Boston Mills Press). Lorina lives with her husband of four decades in a historic stone house in Neustadt, Ontario.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Mary Jean-Harris writes historical and other-world fantasy stories. She is the owner of Fairytale Princess Parties in Ottawa, Ontario, and has a Masters degree in theoretical physics. Mary-Jean has published various short stories in anthologies and online such as the Tesseracts anthologies, Polar Expressions, SciPhi Journal, and Allegory Ezine. Mary-Jean is also the author of the series The Soul Wanderers.

[UPDATED 2019-05-18]

Michael Skeet is an award-winning Canadian writer and broadcaster. Born in Calgary, Alberta, he began writing for radio before finishing college. He has published two novels, (A Poisoned Prayer; A Tangled Weave) with Five Rivers Publishing, and short stories in the science fiction, dark fantasy and horror fields in addition to having extensive publishing credits as a film and music critic. A two-time winner of Canada’s Aurora Award for excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Skeet lives in Toronto.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Michal Wojcik was born in Poland, raised in the Yukon territory and educated in Edmonton and Montreal. He has a Master’s Degree in History from McGill University, where he studied witchcraft trials, medieval priests who tried to summon demons and, occasionally, 17th century texts about giant wheels of enchanted cheese. His stories have appeared in Those Who Make Us, Clockwork Canada, On Spec, The Book Smugglers and Pornokitsch. He currently lives in Whitehorse.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Mike Rimar has matured. He no longer writes witty bios with clever puns. He has stopped comparing his two daughters to pets, especially after the cease and desist order. He sees nothing funny about writing science fiction, fantasy, and some horror, although many of his stories might be considered humorous, and purposefully humorous, not this-is-so-bad-it’s-funny kind of humorous. As proof, his story, A Bunny Hug for Karl, was nominated for the 2014 Prix Aurora for the best in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. He was also an associate publisher of Bundoran Press and co-editor of the anthologies, Second Contacts, for which he won the 2016 Aurora award and Lazurus Risen, for which he was nominated for the 2017 Aurora. He has been published in OSC’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Writers of the Future XXI, On Spec, and Tesseracts 15, all serious publications despite having the occasional humorous story.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

R. W. Hodgson lives with her husband and two children in Ottawa. She spent her childhood in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Susan MacGregor is the author of The Tattooed Witch, The Tattooed Seer, and The Tattooed Queen (Five Rivers Publishing), a historical fantasy trilogy, set in an alternate 1550 inquisitional Spain (think gypsies, magic, flamenco, piracy, and Spanish colonization of the New World). The first book, The Tattooed Witch, was short-listed for a Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Aurora Award in 2014. A prior editor for over twenty years with On Spec Magazine, her short fiction has been featured in On Spec, as well as anthologies, Divine Realms (Ravenstone Books), Northern Frights 5 (Mosaic Press), A Method to the Madness (Five Rivers Publishing), Urban Green Man (EDGE), Equus (Word Weaver Press), and The Dame Was Trouble (Coffin Hop Press). She’s written one non-fiction book on writing – The ABC’s of How NOT to Write Speculative Fiction (Copper Pig Writers Society), an SF writing primer, which she uses as the basis for writing workshops. She co-edited Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales (EDGE) and Tesseracts 22, Alchemy and Artifacts (EDGE). When she isn’t writing or editing, you can find her rehearsing and performing professionally as a singer and dancer of flamenco, or finding calm through painting soft pastel landscapes. Susan lives with her family in Edmonton.

[UPDATED 2019-02-21]

Dr. Tony Pi is a writer in Toronto with a Ph.D. in Linguistics from McGill University. A finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2009, he is also the winner of 2015 Aurora Award for Best English Poem/Song. He loves myth, magic, and history, in particular the Greek and Roman periods, and the Tang and Song Dynasties. He's fascinated by Pompeii, and was thrilled to have visited that buried city on a trip to Italy.

[UPDATED 2020-08-28]