In addition to our Guests of Honor, we are pleased to have these additional guests and attending professionals.
INVITED GUESTS
Blue Delliquanti (they/them)
Blue Delliquanti is a comic artist and writer based in Minneapolis. From 2012 to 2020 Blue drew and serialized the Prism Award-winning science fiction webcomic O Human Star. Blue is also the creator of graphic novels and novellas like Meal (with Soleil Ho), Across a Field of Starlight, and Adversary.
They teach comics courses at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Miss Shannan Paul (She/Her)
Miss Shannan Paul is a comedian, host, and professional chaos-wrangler whose work blends fandom, inclusion, and laugh-out-loud storytelling. She’s the creator of Comedy Through the Chaos — a live show and upcoming TV series that explores how we navigate real life with humor, heart, and a little nerdy joy. A longtime panelist and performer at conventions across the Midwest, Miss Shannan brings her background in stand-up, radio, voiceover, and advocacy to the stage in ways that celebrate community, culture, and the weird wonderfulness of being fully yourself.
ATTENDING PROFESSIONALS
Naomi Krizer (she/her)
Naomi Kritzer has been writing speculative fiction for twenty years. She is a multiple Locus and Hugo-award winning author for both her novels and short stories. She won the Nebula in 2024 for her novelette “The Year Without Sunshine.”
Her first duology (2003), Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm, featured lesbian protagonist. Her Lodestar winning YA novel Catfishing on Cat.Net centers neurodivergent queer youth.
In Minnesota, Naomi is sometimes recognized on the street more often for her blogging, as she also writes about politics (mainly elections) in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Her election guide is an in-depth guide to the candidates in local races, especially races that tend to not get a lot of coverage.
Naomi lives in St. Paul with her family and three cats.
Lyda Morehouse (she/her)
Lyda Morehouse came out as a lesbian when Ronald Reagan was president, Act Up was staging Kiss-Ins at the Mall, and the AIDS crisis was in full swing. Though it took almost two decades until its publication, it was in this political environment that the seeds of her first novel, the Shamus Award winning and Locus Award nominated novel Arcangel Protocol were germinated. She followed that book up with the rest of the five book trilogy: Fallen Host, Messiah Node, Apocalypse Array, and Resurrection Code.
Lyda has since faded in and out of obscurity, remade herself as best-selling paranormal author Tate Hallway (the Garnet Lacey Series, the Vampire Princess of St. Paul series, and the Alex Conner series) and has written over a million words of anime fanfic pseudonymously. She is still publishing and has a new book under her own name, Welcome to Boy.net, out from Wizard’s Tower Press in 2024.
Lyda lives in St. Paul with her wife and son.
C.M. Alongi
(she/her)
C. M. Alongi is a sci-fi/fantasy author and content creator from the Twin Cities. She’s best known for her TikTok series CaFae Latte. The book based on that series, Heart of Iron, comes out October 7, 2025, and her 2023 science fiction novel Citadel was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.
When she’s not reading or writing, Alongi is playing DnD, getting tangled in yarn projects, and defending her furniture from her roommates’ evil cats.
Adam Stemple
(he/him)
Adam Stemple is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, “One of the best first novels I have ever read.” Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, “No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple.”
Like most authors, his life experience is broad and odd. He spent twenty years on the road with a variety of bands playing for crowds of between 2 and 20,000 people. He started, ran, and sold a poker training site. He worked in a warehouse. He picked corn. He traded options and demoed houses. He drove pizzas for nine months in 1986, which for twenty-seven years was the longest he’d ever been employed. He drank too much and has now been sober for over fifteen years. He published his first book at the age of sixteen, “The Lullaby Songbook,” which he arranged the music for. His mother is a famous children’s book author. His children are artistic. His wife is a better person than him in nearly all regards.
Eleanor Arnason (she/her)
From 1949 to 1961, Eleanor and her parents lived in “Idea House #2,” a futuristic dwelling built by the Walker Art Center. Her earliest published story appeared in New Worlds in 1972. Eleanor’s work often depicts cultural change and conflict, usually from the viewpoint of characters who cannot or will not live by their own societies’ rules
Her novel A Women of the Iron People won the very first James Tiptree Jr. Award (now Otherwise Award) in 1991 as well as the 1992 Mythopoeic Award. Her novel Ring of Swords won the Minnesota Book Award. She won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction for “Dapple” and the HOMer Award for her novelette Stellar Harvest. Her novels and short fiction have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell Memorial, the Philip K. Dick, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, the Locus, and the Asimov’s Readers’ Poll awards.
She lives in Minnesota.
Kelly Barnhill (she/her)
Kelly Barnhill writes books. It is a strange job, but, to be fair, she is a strange woman, so perhaps it makes sense. She is a former teacher, former bartender, former waitress, former activist, former park ranger, former secretary, former janitor and former church-guitar-player. The sum of these experiences have prepared her for exactly nothing – save for the telling of stories, which she has been doing quite happily for some time now.
She received the Newbery Medal in 2017, as well as fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the McKnight Foundation. She is the winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Parents Choice Gold Award, the Texas Library Association Bluebonnet, and a Charlotte Huck Honor. She also was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the Andre Norton Award and the PEN/USA literary prize. She has been on the New York Times bestseller list for a bunch of weeks now, as well as the Indie Besteller list. She is the author of the novels THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON, THE WITCH’S BOY, IRON HEARTED VIOLET and THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF JACK, as well as the novella, “The Unlicensed Magician”
Rachel Gold (they/she)
Rachel Gold (they/she) is the author of multiple, award-winning queer & trans young adult novels. Rachel’s debut novel, Being Emily, was the first young Adult novel to tell the story of a transgender girl from her perspective.
Currently an English professor at Macalester College, Rachel has a diverse writing career that includes seven years as a reporter for a regional LGBTQ newspaper and fifteen years in corporate marketing. They’re a nonbinary lesbian, all-around geek and avid gamer.
Watt
(they/them)
After toiling years struggling with their own perfectionist tendencies, Watt started making small watercolor zines during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tabletop RPG writing became a place to explore existential anxiety, body horror, climate change, and connect with friends. Several game jams, small zine releases, and a few Kickstarter campaigns later, Watt is still amazed by the generosity and support they’ve received from the ttrpg community pursuing their art.
“Today I make art games that I hope will be as meaningful when you read them for the first time as when you get them to the table.”
Stephanie Burt (she/her)
Stephanie Burt is the Donald and Katherine Loker Professor of English at Harvard, where she teaches classes on science fiction, comic books, reading poetry, writing about poetry, writing poetry, being queer and trans, and Taylor Swift (not in that order). Among her many books of poetry and literary criticism, the most recent are SUPER GAY POEMS (Harvard U Press, 2025) and WE ARE MERMAIDS (Graywolf, 2022).
Ask her about the X-Men, if you dare.
Bsky: @notquitehydepark.bsky.social Insta: @notquitehydepark
JM Lee
(he/him)
Joe, writing as J.M. Lee, is a Minneapolis writer best known for his work within the world of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, for which he has written television, novels, comics, and other official extended universe material.
He also teaches, speaks, and writes on craft topics such as world building, magic systems, and constructed languages, and supports the wider writing community as a focused editor for queer and Chinese American diaspora themes.
His most recent novel, THE NIGHTLAND EXPRESS, is a modern Western exploring countercolonialism, anticapitalism, and intersectional identity through the lens of iconic Pony Express.
www.joeyverse.com/
Haddayr Copley-Woods
(she/her)
Haddayr is a Minneapolis-based scifi/fantasy writer, radio commentator, and essayist with pieces and performances in places such as Minnesota Public Radio, Apex, Story Club Minneapolis, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best American Erotica.
She writes dark fantasy and horror short stories. Her radio commentaries, essays, and spoken-word performances cover disability issues, community, queerness, and politics. She wrote the advice column “The Gentle Butch” at gentlebutch.com for several years.
Lee Brontide (they/them)
Lee Brontide is an artist, author, and mental health therapist from St Paul, Minnesota. After a decade working in indie comics they found their voice in novels. Their novels include Secondhand Origin Stories and Names in their Blood–part of an ongoing young adult sci-fi series about family, disability, transformation, community, trauma and queerness.
Dax (David J.) Schwartz (they/them)
Dax has published two novels (SUPERPOWERS, a Nebula finalist, and GOOSEBERRY BLUFF COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF MAGIC), a couple of dozen short stories, and various pieces of nonfiction. They are working on a mystery novel with an autistic, non-binary detective who lives in Minneapolis, which coincidentally describes them as well. They also like ice cream.
Lisa Millham (E.M. Hamill) (she/they)
E.M. Hamill is a writer of queer science fiction and urban fantasy. My work PEACEMAKER has been a finalist in the BookLife Prize for Fiction, and most recently WHISKEY AND WARFARE was a finalist which finished fourth of 188 in the Self Published Science Fiction Blog Off.