George R.R. Martin is the author of fifteen novels and novellas, including five volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, several collections of short stories, as well as screenplays for television and feature films. Dubbed 'the American Tolkien', George R.R. Martin has won numerous awards including the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is an Executive Producer on HBO's Emmy Award-winning Game of Thrones, which is based on his A Song of Ice and Fire series. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Gardner Dozois has won fifteen Hugo Awards and twenty-eight Locus Awards as editor on the magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, and for the annual anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction. He has also won two Nebula Awards for his own writing and is the author or editor of over a hundred books.