​BrightFlame (she/they) writes, teaches, and makes magic for bright futures. In addition to her speculative solarpunk novel *THE WORKING*, her climate fiction appears in numerous publications, most recently in *Bright Green Futures* and *Solarpunk Creatures* anthologies. In addition to BSFW, she's a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association. Her globally acclaimed workshops for magical and mundane audiences boost interconnection and resilience. She co-founded the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University that features her workshops and nonfiction. She lives on Lenape territory (Turtle Island/US). brightflame.com

Jamie Liu (she/they) is a writer, climate resilience planner, and Sunrise Movement volunteer. She was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, California, and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her short story "To Labor for the Hive" won Grist's third Imagine 2200 contest and is published in Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future.

Miranda Nayyar has worked in the climate change profession for almost a decade, first across sustainability non-profits including CDP and the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and now as a Senior Manager in the Climate Change practice at EY, where she advises some of the largest corporations in the world on reducing emissions and shifting business models in support of a 1.5C future. She is also a board member of Earth Hacks, an organization dedicated to environmental hackathons. 

Miranda is a member of Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers group where she’s just completed her first novel based in a fantastical and nature-filled world about a girl’s journey exploring the Wilds. 

As a stubborn optimist, Miranda believes that while it’s critical to understand the stakes of inaction on climate, she also believes it’s just as important to collectively imagine a positive, hopeful future of human populations flourishing within the confines of planetary boundaries. 

Artificial Intelligence, a staple of speculative fiction, is here, and we're all playing catch up. Most of us have a gestalt conception, a feeling of what we don't want from AI. But beyond that, we demand stories that better define the right place for AI in our society, be it governance, economy, ecology, or the arts. We demand human centered A.I.

Hilary Mason is the co-founder and CEO of Hidden Door, a game technology studio creating a platform for fans of books, movies, and TV shows to play together in their favorite fictional worlds. Prior to Hidden Door, Hilary was General Manager of the Machine Learning business unit at Cloudera. She previously founded Fast Forward Labs, an applied machine learning research and consulting startup which Cloudera acquired in 2017. Additionally, she was Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Partners, co-founded HackNY, and was Chief Scientist at bitly. Hilary has received numerous awards, is a regular keynote speaker, and has advised startups, corporations, and governments.

Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated author and coder. His many works of short fiction have appeared in Analog, Asimov's, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Tor.com/Reactor, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other publications and anthologies, including multiple Year's Bests. Eighteen of his stories are included in his debut collection, Histories Within Us, now out from Senses Five Press. His far-future novel Space Trucker Jess is coming in 2025 from Fairwood Press. And his Mars-based novella The Rainseekers is forthcoming from Tordotcom in early 2026. Alongside Ellen Datlow, he runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in Manhattan. And he is the creator of the Moksha submissions system, used by many of the largest fiction publishers today.

Holden Lee is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins focusing on mathematical foundations of AI, as well as a speculative fiction writer working on a novel about a half-mermaid's search for belonging. He co-organized the 2024 Workshop on Creativity & Generative AI in Vancouver to foster dialogue between machine learning researchers and creative professionals.