A. Merc Rustad is a queer transmasculine non-binary writer who lives in the Midwest United States. Favorite things include: robots, dinosaurs, monsters, and tea. Their stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Lightspeed, Fireside Fiction, Apex, Escape Pod, Shimmer, Cicada, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, and Wilde Stories 2016. Merc likes to play video games, watch movies, read comics, and wear awesome hats. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Rustad or their website https://amercrustad.com.

A. A. Balaskovits holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and is a PhD candidate at The University of Missouri. Her work can or will be found at Booth, The Southeast Review, The Madison Review, Shimmer, and others. She has finished a collection of reworkings of fairy tales and folklore, of which this story is a part, and is currently working on a novel.

AC Wise is the author of numerous short stories appearing in publications such as Clarkesworld, Apex, Shimmer, and the Year’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 1, among others. In addition to her writing, she co-edits Unlikely Story. Find her online at www.acwise.net.

A.C. Buchanan lives and writes near Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Their writing has been published in Kaleidotrope, Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, and Glittership, along with several anthologies. They edit the speculative fiction magazine Capricious and also like cheese, dinosaurs, and building websites. You can find them at www.andicbuchanan.org or on Twitter at @andicbuchanan.

A.E. Ash is a writer, nerd, gamer, mooncalf but not a baker or candlestick maker (and nobody said anything about butcher). She writes poetry and speculative fiction because why not make good use of an over-active imagination? A.E. Ash lives the U.S. with her super-rad husband where they definitely are not plotting plans for world domination. Ash is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop but the most valuable lessons she has learned about writing she’s begged, borrowed, and stolen from the weirdness of everyday life.

Aaron Saylor lives in Kentucky with his wife, Leslie. In addition to writing, he spends his time playing poker, watching horror movies, and catching up on all the Marvel comics he missed when he was a kid. His latest novel, Adventures in Terror: Mostly the 1980s was released in August 2015 and expands the story of Jasper and Boo, the protagonists of his story in this very issue of Apex Magazine. Visit him on Facebook, Twitter, and Sewerville.com.

Abhinav Bhat is a writer from Jammu & Kashmir, India. He has jumped without a parachute. A fantasy novel popped out some way down, followed by a few short stories, one of which you are reading. We’ll let you know whether he goes splat or flies.

Abra Staffin–Wiebe spent several years living abroad in India and Africa before marrying a mad scientist and settling down to live and write in Minneapolis. She specializes in dark science fiction, cheerful horror, and modern fairy tales. However, she rarely gets a chance to write about goat testicles. She also maintains Aswiebe’s Market List, a resource for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers. Discover more of her fiction at her website, https://www.aswiebe.com, or find her on the social media site of your choice.

Ada Hoffman is a Canadian author whose poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling, and Mythic Delirium, and has been nominated for the Rhysling award. When she isn’t singing, LARPing, or noodling around with computers, she also writes short prose fiction, and she made her first professional sales in 2013. Ada blogs about speculative fiction and autism at ada–hoffmann.com, and you can find her on Twitter at @xasymptote.

Adam Roberts is the author of sixteen novels, the most recent being The Thing Itself (Gollancz 2015), and a great many short stories, some of which are collected in Adam Robots (Gollancz 2012). He lives in England between London and Reading.

Adam R. Shannon is a career firefighter and paramedic, as well as a fiction writer, aspiring cook, and steadfast companion of dogs. He and his wife live in Virginia, where they preside over the furry whirlwinds of two resident canines as well as visiting foster dogs. His work has appeared in Compelling Science Fiction, Every Day Fiction, the anthology Behind the Mask, and elsewhere. He’s a graduate of Clarion West 2017.

Adam-Troy Castro’s short fiction has been nominated for two Hugos, three Stokers, and eight Nebulas. The author of 27 books that include the Philip K. Dick Award winner Emissaries from the Dead, he has just launched a major middle-grade series with Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (Grosset and Dunlap, out now).