This event was originally programmed to take place on Saturday 5th June at 5pm, but had to be rescheduled.

Join self-professed Slasher film aficionados Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group) and Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart Is a Chainsaw) as they discuss their favourite horror tropes on screen and in print, and how they inspire their writing.

About the event:

Chaired by G.G. Graham

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Grady Hendrix writes fiction, also called "lies," and he writes non-fiction, which people sometimes accidentally pay him for. He is the author of Horrorstör, the only novel about a haunted Scandinavian furniture store you'll ever need. It has been translated into 14 languages and is being turned into a movie from the people who made quality films like 1917 and Black Swan. Foolishly, they are paying Grady to write it. He is busy inserting a whole lot of tutus into it right now. His latest book, Final Girl Support Group, is published by Titan.

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of twenty-five or thirty books, his most recent one being My Heart Is A Chainsaw. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favourite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in. He's married with a couple of kids, and probably one too many trucks

Join three of Scotland's genre writing groups - Edinburgh Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers, Edinburgh Genre Writers, and Glasgow Science Fiction Writer's Circle - for a post-Cymera Fest get together.

The event will start with a short intro to the different groups, then there will be the chance for informal catch ups with optional breakout room chats to get to know fellow genre writers in Scotland.

Come along for the full event or just drop in and say hello! All welcome.

About the event:

Tickets: FREE

The event will be live on Zoom.

In the stunning finale of Becky Chamber’s Wayfarer Series, The Galaxy, And The Ground Within, three strangers do their best to help those at the fringes of the Galactic Commons after a freak technological failure brings all traffic to a halt, while in Stark Holborn’s Ten Low an ex-con ventures on a breakneck race to escape across an alien moon thriving with aliens and criminals.

Two telling tales to remind us that we are not alone in space!

About the event:

Chaired by Laura Lam

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Becky Chambers is a science fiction author based in Northern California. She is best known for her Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series. She has two new works coming out in 2021: The Galaxy, and The Ground Within (the fourth and final Wayfarers novel), and A Psalm for the Wild-Built (the first of her Monk and Robot novellas). Becky has a background in performing arts, and grew up in a family heavily involved in space science. She spends her free time playing video games, tabletop RPGs, and looking through her telescope. Having hopped around the world a bit, she’s now back in her home state, where she lives with her wife. She hopes to see Earth from orbit one day.

Stark Holborn is a novelist, games writer, film reviewer, and the author of Nunslinger and Triggernometry and has worked on games and interactive fiction such as Shadow of Doubt (Colepowered Games) and Mars 2020 (BBC). Stark lives in the South West UK.

There are many ways to win a fight. From forbidden knowledge to lost magics, a good sharp sword and a well-placed word, the protagonists of these epic adventures must expertly wield their chosen weapons to come out top.

In Anna Stephen's new book The Stone Knife, the fight for freedom takes it all: a veteran general seeks peace through war, a warrior and a shaman set out to understand their enemies, and an ambitious noble tries to bend ancient magic to her will.

To save the Republic in Matthew Ward's The Legacy Trilogy, three unlikely heroes must set aside their differences, and overcome decades of bad blood.

And Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Son of the Storm is a sweeping tale of violent conquest and forgotten magic set in a world inspired by the pre-colonial empires of West Africa.

About the event:

Chaired by Andrew Lindsay

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Anna Stephens is the UK-based author of the Godblind trilogy, a grimdark, epic fantasy feast concerning gods, religious and political warfare, betrayal, love and the end of all things. The Stone Knife is her latest publication. She has a BA (Hons) in Literature and a Diploma in Creative Writing, both from the Open University. Anna has previously been published in several small presses over the years. She’s currently attempting to be a full-time writer, much to her husband’s amusement. Anna loves all things speculative, from books to film to TV, but if you disagree keep it to yourself as she’s also a second Dan black belt in Shotokan Karate.

Cat-servant and owner of more musical instruments than he can actually play, Matthew Ward is also the author of Legacy of Ash, architect of Coldharbour and Creative Consultant on Vermintide 2. He’s afflicted with an obsession for old places - castles, historic cities and the London Underground chief amongst them. After a decade serving as a principal architect for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 properties, Matthew embarked on an adventure to tell stories set in worlds of his own design. He lives near Nottingham and writes to entertain anyone who feels there is not enough magic in the world.

Matthew is on Twitter.

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is the author of Son of the Storm (Orbit, May 2021), first in The Nameless Republic epic fantasy trilogy, and the god punk novel, David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019). His shorter works have appeared internationally in periodicals like Tor.com, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Fireside, and anthologies like Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda and Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. He earned his MFA at the University of Arizona.

Suyi Davies is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

With over twenty books published in the last ten years, V.E. Schwab is one of the most prolific SFF writers out there. During Lockdown, her No Write Way! chat series on Instagram Live brought much joy to readers (and writers) all over the world.

Now it’s her turn to answer those tricky questions about writing.

V.E. Schwab is the No.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Vicious, The Near Witch and the Shades of Magic series, which was described as “a classic work of fantasy” by Deborah Harkness. It was one of Waterstones’ Best Fantasy Books of 2015, The Guardian’s Best Science Fiction novels, and a Telegraph choice. The Independent has called her “The natural successor to Diana Wynne Jones.”

She lives between Nashville, France and Edinburgh.

About the event:

Chaired by Stephanie Goulden

Running time: 30 minutes

The event will premiered on YouTube.

After the premiere, the event will be hosted on the Member Area of the Cymera website.

Buckle your seat belts as spycraft is up against extermination of humanity: a man’s desperate mission to fix a glitch in a secret and dangerous underground game in Terry Miles’ Rabbits, a private investigator working in London’s magic criminal underworld in Cavan Scott’s Shadow Service and a disgraced world walker and her mother fighting coming up against robotic alien invaders after an inter-timeline coup d’etat gone awry in Charlie Stross’ Invisible Sun. 

About the event:

Chaired by Peter Sutton

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Cavan Scott is a UK number one bestseller who writes novels, comics, radio and TV for both adults and children alike. He has written for a large number of high-profile series including Star Wars, Doctor Who, Assassin’s Creed, Transformers, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Vikings, Pacific Rim, Adventure Time, Pathfinder, Angry Birds, Judge Dredd, Blake’s 7 and Warhammer 40,000. His latest creator-owned comic book series, the supernatural urban fantasy Shadow Service launched in 2020 from Vault Comics, with further creator-owned projects in the works.

Cavan is on Twitter and Facebook.

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine Computer Shopper and was responsible for the monthly Linux column. His latest book is The Invisible Sun.

Terry Miles is an award-winning Writer/Director/Producer who was born among the wheat fields in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, raised in the plains beneath the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and forged by rain in the deep emerald gloom of the Pacific Northwest. He’s a novelist, filmmaker, podcaster and the CEO and founder of Minnow Beats Whale.

Terry is on Twitter.

Welcome to worlds of endless nights and midnight suns.

The rich mythology and history of the Norse people have inspired the new epic fantasy stories of John Gwynne (The Shadow of the Gods) and Thilde Kold Holdt (Northern Wrath)

Meanwhile, Mike Brooks combines both Northern and Southern settings and cultures to create the truly epic world for his book The Black Coast.

Prepare yourself for vengeful gods, cold shores and epic battles.

About the event:

Chaired by T.L. Huchu

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

John Gwynne is the author of The Faithful and the Fallen quartet and the Of Blood and Bone trilogy. He studied and lectured at Brighton University. He's been in a rock 'n' roll band, playing the double bass, travelled the USA and lived in Canada for a time.

Mike Brooks is the author of The God-King Chronicles epic fantasy series, beginning with The Black Coast; the Keiko series of grimy space-opera novels, DARK RUN, DARK SKY and DARK DEEDS; and various works for Games Workshop’s Black Library imprint, including BRUTAL KUNNIN and ALPHARIUS: HEAD OF THE HYDRA. He was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, and moved to Nottingham to go to university when he was eighteen, where he still lives with his wife, cats, and snakes. He worked in the homelessness sector for fifteen years before going full-time as an author, plays the guitar and sings in a punk band, and DJs wherever anyone will tolerate him. He is queer and partially deaf (no, that occurred naturally, and a long time before the punk band).

Thilde Kold Holdt is a writer of fantasy novels. Her first series, the Hanged God Trilogy, centres around Vikings and the Old Norse gods. She is on Twitter and Instagram.

Unfortunately Marian Womack is not longer able to participate in this event. It will go ahead with Jael Richardson in conversation with Patrice Lawrence.

Jael Richardson’s Gutter Child and Marian Womack’s The Swimmers both chronicle one young woman’s journey through a fractured dystopian world of heartbreaking disadvantages and shocking social environmental and social injustices.

Can they defy the systems that shapes their worlds?

About the event:

Chaired by Patrice Lawrence

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The Stone Thrower was adapted into a children’s book in 2016 and was shortlisted for a Canadian picture book award. Richardson is a book columnist and guest host on CBC’s q. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario where she founded and serves as the Executive Director for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). Her debut novel, Gutter Child is a dystopian story of courage and resilience and arrived in January 2021 with HarperCollins Canada.

Marian Womack is a bilingual writer, born by the Atlantic Ocean in a small Andalusian town, and educated in the UK. Her writing is concerned with nature and it features strange landscapes, ghostly encounters, and uncanny transformations through a variety of genres – experimental and hybrid fiction, speculative fiction, gothic and ghostly fiction, and fiction of the Anthropocene. The Swimmers is her latest releae. She is interested in the intersection of storytelling and other forms of narrative, and has participated in art installations, video games, and activist campaigns.

Marian is on Twitter and Instagram.

This Open Mic is free to watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/DI8qbg8q3Q0

Our readers:

+++ Hannah Faoilean

Hannah lives in Edinburgh and writes YA Fantasy, short stories and poems. She’s had a short story published in "Dream Catcher" literary magazine and will soon have a piece of microfiction published in Grindstone 2020 winners anthology. She is reading from her YA fantasy Spell.

Hannah @hfaoilean can be found on Twitter and on her website.

+++ Jeffrey Palms

Jeffrey is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where he researches how music can challenge notions of "progress" in Science Fiction. Separately, his nonfiction book I'm Having a Knippchen, will be published by Black Fountain Press in July 2021. Jeffrey is reading from his novel Electriano.

Jeffrey @palmsfrey can be found on Twitter.

+++ Ellis Saxey

Ellis is a queer Londoner who works in Universities. Their short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Best of British Fantasy 2019, The Future Fire and others. They are performing their piece Until one hundred generations – Enjoy!

Ellis @esaxey can be found on Twitter and on their website.

+++ Matthew Wasley

Matthew is a some-time writer living in Edinburgh. He has had two whole jokes broadcast on Newsjack. His last novel featured an alien AI inhabiting a shed and he is currently working on one that involves a Datsun Cherry in space. For our open Mic he is reading from The Shed.

Matthew @matthewwasley can be found on Twitter.

+++ Zebib K. A.

Zebib K. A. is a writer and psychiatrist. She is completing a Masters in Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh. She has been published in The Rumpus, Apparition Lit, and more. She is finishing her first novel, a scifi, psychological thriller. " Her Open Mic reading is the story The Body in Seams
Zebib @pegasusunder1 can be found on Twitter and on her website.

This event will be premiering on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DI8qbg8q3Q0

This workshop is designed to help you address the difficult topic of ‘Writing Outside of Your Experience’ by developing your own critical thinking toolkit. From discussing the importance of cultural engagement to considering how to approach the topic in a respectful and skillful way, this will provide a primer for you to begin your journey. The workshop will also introduce a framework for seeking and accepting feedback on your work and provide a list of additional resources to encourage further study in this area.

Katie Griffiths is an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Napier University, and the Co-Founder and Editor of Malefaction Magazine.

Running time: 120 minutes

Tickets: £6/ £4 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

This workshop is supported by Write Gear, purveyor of the Writer’s Notebook and creators of The Page One podcast

When your own freedom is at stake, what price are you willing to pay to save yourself and millions around you?

In Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell, the success of an arranged marriage may just decide the fate of a whole empire. And then there is the small matter of the suspicious circumstances surrounding death of the previous spouse …

Meanwhile in Seven Devils by Elizabeth May and Laura Lam, seven resistance fighters are up against a corrupt empire.

About the event:

Chaired by Eris Young

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Elizabeth May is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Seven Devils (co-written with Laura Lam), The Falconer series (The Falconer, The Vanishing Throne, The Fallen Kingdom), and romance novels under the pen name Katrina Kendrick. She is Californian by birth and Scottish by choice, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews. She currently resides on an old farm in rural Scotland with her husband, three cats, and a lively hive of resident honey bees.

Elizabeth is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Everina Maxwell is the author of Winter’s Orbit, a queer romantic space opera about a diplomat who enters into an arranged marriage to save his planet. She grew up in Sussex, UK, which has come a long way from the days of Cold Comfort Farm and now has things like running water and Brighton Pier. She was lucky enough to live near a library that stocked Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne McCaffrey and Terry Pratchett, so spent all her spare time devouring science fiction and doorstopper fantasy. She first took part in NaNoWriMo in 2004 and continues to precariously balance writing, a day job, and watching Let’s Plays of video games she claims she doesn’t have time to play. She lives and works in Yorkshire.

Everina is on Twitter.

Originally from sunny California, Laura Lam now lives in cloudy Scotland. Lam is a Sunday Times Bestselling author whose work includes the near-future space thriller, Goldilocks and feminist space opera Seven Devils (co-written with Elizabeth May). Lam’s short fiction and essays have appeared in anthologies such as Nasty Women, Solaris Rising 3, Cranky Ladies of History, Scotland in Space, and more. Lam’s romance alter ego is Laura Ambrose. Lam lectures part-time at Edinburgh Napier University on the Creative Writing MA.

Laura is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

In the ancient city of Edenberg, something is stirring beneath the streets.  Dark signs and portents have been seen, rumours of waking evil and unspoken sins.  In a time of calamity, the land cried out for the strong, the brave, the wise, for the greatest heroes the city had ever seen... unfortunately, this lot answered.

 Join Adrian Tchaikovsky, MR Carey, Tasha Suri and RJ Barker, under the guiding hand of Claire North, on a quest to discover what happens when you take four critically acclaimed, award-winning SF/Fantasy writers and ask them to unleash their full talent and imagination, while also doing maths.

Running time: 120 minutes

The event is pre-recorded and available on YouTube:

Session Zero - Trailer: https://youtu.be/vBqwGAfDTvY

Session One - Part 1: https://youtu.be/0edaQrphLvE

Session One - Part 2: https://youtu.be/pTrzxOAqbec

This event is made possible by a donation from Neil Broadley.

Cast of Characters

Adrian Tchaikovsky as Cornelius ‘Pox’ Mulder

• Cornelius Moulder, “Pox” to his friends, likes long autumn walks just after the rain, the smell of decomposing fruit and a thick crust of mycelium on just about everything. After spending a couple of secluded centuries tending subterranean gardens in the service of perpetuating the natural order of life, death and decay, he decided he was due a sabbatical and has taken up travelling. Unlike all those fancy hipster surface druids with their green fingers and delicate sensibilities, Moulder is all about getting his hands dirty. He loves growing things, especially growing them out of other things that were until recently running around and being alive. It’s all part of nature’s rich cycle. You say zombie, he says ambulatory mushroom planter. He’s a fussy, wrinkled little gnome surrounded (Pigpen-style) by a constant cloud of fine particles it’s probably best not to inhale. His constant companion is Jeremy, a rat of ill aspect who needs to be bribed with cheese to do anything useful. His several hundred other constant companions are moulds and mushrooms that grow from his hair, beard, clothes, cheese and Jeremy, which serve as seasoning, snacks, conversation pieces and occasionally confidantes.

• Adrian is appearing at the Cymera https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/2021-digital-events/adrian-tchaikovsky-and-cassandra-khaw a full bio and details of their latest publications can be found here.

• Adrian can be found @aptshadow

Claire North as DM/Writer

• Claire is appearing at the Cymera https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/2021-digital-events/from-the-ashes-claire-north-and-derek-b-miller a full bio and details of their latest publications can be found here

• Claire can be found @ClaireNorth42

Mike Carey as Kimia

• Kimia is a Tiefling, which means her ancestors consorted with demons. It's a hard thing to live down. In a lot of people's eyes, her race (horns, pointy tail et al) makes her inherently suspect - kind of like the snake in the garden of Eden. She doesn't mind that at all, and generally does her best to live up to the image. She's a thief by trade but she's done assassination in a small way when it offered - both for pay and to further her own agenda. Raised by the Brothers of the Living Flame, she realised (aged about ten) that she was not so much an adopted daughter of the order as an offering bred for sacrifice. She escaped from the order's cliff-top chapel, then came back some years later to burn it down. She still hunts ex-members of the Brotherhood in her off-hours, although it's been a while since she ran into any. She's cut something of a swathe through their congregation over the years. Somewhere along the way she learned the Find Familiar spell and acquired an imp which looks like a tiny version of Kimia herself, but with wings. This irritating little speck is named Smol, and she has enormous delusions of adequacy. Kimia is kind of envious of Smol's wings, if the truth be told. She hates that she's a wingless Tiefling, and would do literally anything to remedy the fact. She has low morals, a drinking problem and a short temper. Oh, and a purse full of marbles that she uses to trigger the Shatter spell. Explosions are one of her favourite things.

• More info on M.R. Carey can be found here https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/contributor/m-r-carey-2/

• Mike can be found @michaelcarey191

RJ Barker as Count Alucard de Nosferatu

• Count Alucard de Nosferatu the vampire pirate intended to be none of those things but was, sadly, a victim of extreme nominative determinism. Raised as an orphan on the mean streets of a long forgotten city in a distant land, he was picked up as a slave by Lord Genericus Bitu, who ran the city along with his vampire aristocracy. Count A, slowly worked his way up through the tiers of vampire slave society until he reached the highest level, that of food. However, after a particularly raucous vampire party a teenage Alucard found out that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. He was fed from and tossed aside into the corpse pit, but in the great tradition of all revenge fantasies, HE WAS NOT DEAD.Waking as a vampire Alucard swore revenge on all aristocracy and royalty and launched himself on a crusade of VENGEANCE in which he intended to seize the means of production via piracy. He found that, not only does piracy allow him to avenge himself on the fat and the rich it’s also incredibly lucrative. This has allowed him to indulge an inexplicable love of 18th century clothes from a world he does not even know exists that he inherited along with his vampire powers. Throughout his many years of vampire piracy he’s never quiet seized the means of production and has been forced to find what comfort he can in becoming immensely rich. He’s currently on land rather than aboard his ship, The Red Flag, for tax reasons.

• RJ Barker is appearing at the Cymera https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/2021-digital-events/there-be-dragons-with-rj-barker-and-mark-de-jager a full bio and details of their latest publications can be found there.

• RJ can be found @dedbutdrmng

Tasha Suri as Merry Berry

• Merry Berry (Berry to you) is paladin with an oath of VENGEANCE. She used to be a terrifying Batman-esque figure in her dark armour with her giant axe, smashing in to punish evil-doers. But now she is a hench grandmother dwarf who spends most of her time knitting ugly jumpers. She's been retired for years but now her youngest grandchild is in Ye Olde Fantasy Nursery and isn't underfoot, she's back for One Last Quest. She is still a force to be reckoned, merciless to her enemies, and slow to trust. But she doesn't need to trust you to feed you a sandwich - and she will feed you a sandwich - and she is very patient and sensible. She's liable to whip out her knitting during lulls in fighting.

• Tasha is appearing at the Cymera https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/2021-digital-events/to-make-and-break-an-empire-with-andrea-stewart-and-tasha-suri a full bio and details of their latest publications can be found there

• Tasha can be found @tashadrinkstea

ABS – Production

• Programs and produces the Cymera Festival RPG strand amongst other things

• http://abs.ventures/ or @_A_B_S_

In the wastelands of a future Britain, the unlikely heroes of the new novels by T.L. Huchu and Jonathan Stroud just try to make a living.

In T.L Huchu's Edinburgh-set The Library of the Dead, Ropa makes her living delivering messages between the living and the dead.  When the ghosts star whispering of an evil targetting children, she sets out to discover the trush - armed with Zimbabwean magic and Scottish pragmatism. 

In Jonathan Stroud's The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne, Scarlett prefers bank robbery to a more traditional career path. A chance encounter in the wilderness opens up a whole new set of opportunities. All Scarlett has to do is survive the flight across hostile countryside with its giant otters and cannibals, and the company of Browne.

About the event:

Chaired by Patrice Lawrence

Running time: 60 minutes

The event premiered on YouTube.

After the premiere, the event will be hosted on the Member Area of the Cymera website.

About the authors

T. L. Huchu is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Interzone, AfroSF and elsewhere. He is the winner of a Nommo Award for African SF/F, and has been short-listed for the Caine Prize and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. Between projects, he translates fiction from Shona into English and the reverse. The Library of the Dead is the first in his Edinburgh Nights series."

Jonathan Stroud was born in Bedford, England and grew up in St Albans. After graduating from York University he embarked on a publishing and writing career in the gamebook and non-fiction department at Walker Books. He moved to Kingfisher Publications to edit children's non-fiction, and for a time juggled working with writing, but Stroud is now a full-time writer. In May 1999, Stroud burst onto the children’s book scene with his first novel, Buried Fire. His second fantasy adventure, The Leap, was published in January 2001 as part of the new Definitions list. 2003 saw the publication of a brand new novel, the first title of The Bartimeus Trilogy called The Amulet of Samarkand, an enthralling new fantasy trilogy about a wickedly witty and thoroughly irresistible "djinni." The Last Siege, published in October 2006, tells the tale of a chance encounter on the snowy slopes of a castle moat which throws together three lonely teenagers whose playful dares turn into a frenzy of nightmarish action when a re-enactment of a castle siege becomes very real.

Jonathan is on Twitter.

What makes a place a home? And how far would you go to protect yours?

In Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker, Norah and Arthur are learning how to co-exist in their new little world. Though they hardly know each other, everything seems to be going perfectly - from the home they're building together to the ring on Norah's finger. But survival in this world is a tricky thing, and the earth is becoming increasingly hostile to live in. Fortunately, Easton Grove is here for that in the form of a perfect little bundle to take home and harvest. You can live for as long as you keep it - or her – close.

Set within the high walls of the Western Protectorate, Aliya Whiteley's Skyward Inn, is a place of safety, where people come together peacefully to tell stories of the time before the war with Qita. But when a visitor comes to the Inn asking for help, they bring reminders of an unnerving past, questioning the true outcome of the war, and Earth's future.

About the event:

Chaired by Cat Hellisen

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Aliya Whiteley writes across many different genres and lengths. Her first published full-length novels, Three Things About Me and Light Reading, were comic crime adventures. Her 2014 SF-horror novella The Beauty was shortlisted for the James Tiptree and Shirley Jackson awards. The following historical-SF novella, The Arrival of Missives, was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, and her noir novel The Loosening Skin was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award. Her latest publication is Skyward Inn.

Aliyah is on Twitter.

Caroline Hardaker lives in the north east of England and writes quite a lot of things. She earned her BA (English Literature) and MA (Cultural and Heritage Studies) from Newcastle University, and her main problem is limiting herself to one idea at once, or maybe two ideas, or three…. Caroline’s debut novel, Composite Creatures, will be published by Angry Robot in April 2021.

Caroline is on Twitter.

Come along for an informal chat with award-winning writer Gareth Powell.

About the event:

Running time: 30 minutes

This event will be live on Zoom.

Free but spaces are limited.

Stephen Hawking once said that the development of AI could spell the end of the human race. In the new books by Akemi Dawn Bowman and Ben Oliver, we certainly don't have the best of times going up against them. 

In Akemi Dawn Bowman's The Infinity Courts, eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto discovers that the afterlife has been taken over by an AI bent on destroying humanity. Meanwhile, in Ben Oliver's The Block, the sequel to his debut The Loop, Luka goes to war against an all-powerful AI called Happy – once he gets out of prison that is.

About the event:

Chaired by Linda Strachan

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Akemi Dawn Bowman is a critically acclaimed author who writes across genres. Her novels - including her most recent The Infinity Courts - have received multiple accolades and award nominations, and her debut novel, Starfish, was a William C. Morris Award Finalist. She has a BA in social sciences from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and currently lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She overthinks everything, including this bio.

Akemi Dawn is on Twitter and Instagram.

Ben Oliver began writing creatively at age seven and was promptly placed into the lowest reading and writing group at school. Frustrated by his lack of immediate success, Ben chose to step down from the world of writing. Three years later, he came out of retirement to write a 'What I Did During My Summer Holiday' assignment, where he claimed he saved the world from the apocalypse. Encouraged by an enthusiastic teacher, Ben returned, triumphantly, to writing - The Block is his latest publication.

Ben is on Twitter.

As his time-travel novel The Recollection celebrates its tenth anniversary, and not a year goes by without a prize shortlist/win, we chat to Gareth L. Powell about his writing and his writing career.

Gareth L. Powell is an award-winning British science fiction author. He is best known for his Embers of War and Ack-Ack Macaque trilogies, but he has also written numerous short stories, novellas, and even turned his hand to screenwriting and comic scripts. Recently, Stampede Ventures and wiip have partnered to adapt his Embers of War novels for television, and he will act as Co-Executive Producer for the series.

He was born in Bristol and still lives nearby. He began writing at school and university and was fortunate to count Diana Wynne Jones and Helen Dunmore as early mentors.

His books have twice won the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award for Best Novel and have been finalists for the Locus, British Fantasy, and Seiun awards.

Gareth’s other passions include screenwriting, photography (the results of which you can see on his Instagram page), and digital art, of which he has recently sold a number of pieces.

In 2013, he realised a life-long ambition when a five-page strip he’d written appeared in the British comic 2000 AD.

Gareth spends a lot of time on Twitter, where he is known for the advice and encouragement he offers to fledgling writers. He has also included a lot of that advice in On Writing, a handbook for aspiring authors.

About the event:

Chaired by Marco Rinaldi and Tariq Ashkanani from The Page One Podcast

Running time: 30 minutes

The event premiered on YouTube

After the premiere, the event will be hosted on the Member Area of the Cymera website.

This event is followed by a live Kaffeeklatsch. More info here

How do you create characters that capture readers' imaginations? In this workshop novelist and creative writing tutor David Bishop explores different ways to conceive and build a character. How much do you need to know about a character before you start writing? And how much should you share with readers

David Bishop is the author of twenty published novels and an award-winning screenwriter, he helped found the innovative MA Creative Writing programme at Edinburgh Napier in 2009. David is a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers' Association and a trustee of the Cymera Festival of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Writing. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship by Creative Scotland in 2017. In his copious spare time David is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Lancaster University in England. His latest novel, historical crime fiction City of Vengeance, was published earlier this year to much acclaim.

Running time: 90 minutes

Tickets: £6/ £4 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

This workshop is supported by Write Gear, purveyor of the Writer’s Notebook and creators of The Page One podcast

My home is my castle, right? The houses in Such Pretty Things by Lisa Heathfield and The Last House On Needless Street by Catriona Ward are not what they seem to be:

As Clara and Stephen explore their Auntie’s remote home, they uncover ghosts buried long ago. And every day they spend there, bewildered Clara can feel unknown forces changing her brother.  And something else entirely lies buried inside the last house on Needless Street, lived in by Ted, his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia. 

Goosebumps guaranteed!

About the event:

Chaired by Heather Parry

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. She’s the author of The Last House on Needless Street.

Catriona is on Twitter.

Lisa Heathfield is an award-winning author and a former high school English teacher. She lives with her family in Brighton, England. Her latest publication is Such Pretty Things.

Lisa is on Twitter.

Distracted by mind games, murder and mayhem, can you tell friends from foes?

Arriving in London during a series of attacks at young, brunette women, sixteen-year-old Irish-born Niamh needs to trust her new friends and stay ahead of the attacker in Cynthia Murphy’s Last One To Die. And Kathryn Foxfield’s Good Girls Die First, blackmail has sixteen-year-old Ava facing up to her secrets and deciding how far she is willing to go to survive the night against her peers.

About the event:

Chaired by Tony Jones

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Cynthia Murphy is a YA writer from the North-West of England, though her ‘real job’ is in education. She has a long-standing love affair with all things scary, reading Point Horrors at primary school before graduating to Stephen King in her misguided teens. Classic 90s and 00s horror movies are definitely her pub quiz strong point and her first love may well have been Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Studying for a degree in Art History and Archaeology meant that she developed a thirst for anything old, beautiful and very often dead. She tries to combine this with contemporary settings in her writing to make unique and chilling modern stories. Cynthia is married to her best friend and they share (are ruled by) a Romanian rescue dog called Loli, who loves to steal socks. Her YA thriller Last One To Die is published by Scholastic in the UK.

Cynthia is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Kathryn Foxfield writes dark books about strange things. She blames her love of the creepy and weird on a childhood diet of Point Horror, Agatha Christie and Dr Who. She writes about characters who aren’t afraid to fight back, but wouldn’t last 5 minutes in one of her own stories. Kathryn is a reformed microbiologist, one-time popular science author, cat-servant and parent. She lives in rural Oxfordshire but her heart belongs to London. ​ Her YA thriller Good Girls Die First is published by Scholastic in the UK.

Kathryn is on Twitter and Instagram.

Bonjour in 1930s Paris and God Bless you, England, in the Year of Our Lord 1145. 

That’s right: Barbara Stevenson’s The Dalliances of Monsieur D’Haricot and Lavie Tidhar’s The Hood will take you on a history lesson you won’t forget….

About the event:

Chaired by Justin Lee Anderson

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Barbara Stevenson has a background in veterinary medicine and subsequently, animals feature in many of her stories – some with outspoken things to say about humans. She studied creative writing as part of an Open University BA(Hons) degree and has had a novel and short stories published. In 2014 her humorous sketch ‘Commonwealth Conundrum’, about Martians trying to join the Commonwealth, was performed in the Tron Theatre, Glasgow. In 2016 she won the Scottish Association of Writers’ Livingstone scholarship trophy and the Castles in the Air Trophy for a short story in the fantasy genre. She lives in Orkney, where she finds inspiration for her writing.

Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama (2011), Seiun nominated The Violent Century (2013), the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize winning A Man Lies Dreaming (2014), and the Campbell Award and Neukom Prize winning Central Station (2016), and Locus and Campbell award nominated Unholy Land (2018), in addition to many other works and several other awards. His latest novels By Force Alone (2020) and debut children’s novel Candy (2018 UK; as The Candy Mafia 2020 US). He is also the author of the comics mini-series Adler. New novel The Escapement is forthcoming in 2021.

In this workshop you will learn tips, tricks and techniques to take your mastery of POV to a new level. Learn how to intensify reader experience, extend your imagination and explore new possibilities in your storytelling.

Georgina Bruce is a writer and teacher. Her short stories have been widely published in magazines and anthologies, and have been longlisted for the Bridport and Mslexia short story prizes. In 2017, her story “White Rabbit” won the British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. Her 2019 debut collection“This House of Wounds” was nominated for a British Fantasy Award.

Running time: 90 minutes

Tickets: £6/ £4 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

This workshop is supported by Write Gear, purveyor of the Writer’s Notebook and creators of The Page One podcast

This event starts with a Brave New Words reading from Lindz McLeod

Fairytales, myths and legends are the oldest stories we tell, and they continue to inspire new ones. In the new books by Lucy Holland (Sistersong), A.G. Slatter (All the Murmuring Bones) and Hannah Whitten (For the Wolf), we encounter three rebellious sisters, learn not to meddle with vengeful sea creatures and meet the big but maybe not so bad wolf.

About the event:

Chaired by Ann Landmann

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

This event includes a Brave New Words reading from Lindz McLeod

About the authors:

Angela Slatter is a writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Primarily working in the field of speculative fiction, she has focused on short stories since deciding to pursue writing in 2005, when she undertook a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing. Since then she has written a number of short stories. Her latest work, All the Murmuring Bones, is published by Titan.

Angela is on Twitter and Facebook.

Hannah Whitten has been writing to amuse herself since she could hold a pen, and sometime in high school, figured out that what amused her might also amuse others. For The Wolf, her most recent book, is published by Orbit. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, making music, or attempting to bake. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and children in a house ruled by a temperamental cat.

Hannah is on Twitter and Instagram.

Lucy Holland works for Waterstones and has a BA in English & Creative Writing from Royal Holloway. She went on to complete an MA in Creative Writing under Andrew Motion in 2010. Lucy lives in Devon and co-hosts Breaking the Glass Slipper, an award-winning feminist podcast. She is the author of Sistersong.

Lucy is on Twitter.

This event starts with a Brave New Words reading from Ry Herman

What lengths would you go to to keep an empire?

In Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, Emperor Chandra's attempt to burn his own sister Malini as a sacrifice to the gods is only the start. Imprisoned in exile, Malini plots revenge, and her newly acquired servant Priya and her strange magic may just be the key to Chandra's downfall.

In Andrea Stewart's debut The Bone Shard Daughter, Lin, the Emperor's daughter, vows to reclaim her birthright by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic. But the mysteries behind such power are dark and deep, and wielding her family's magic carries a great cost. When the revolution reaches the gates of the palace itself, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her throne - and save her people.

About the event:

Chaired by Elspeth Wilson

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

This event includes a Brave New Words reading from Ry Herman

About the authors

Andrea Stewart is the daughter of immigrants, and was raised in a number of places across the United States. Her parents always emphasized science and education, so she spent her childhood immersed in Star Trek and odd-smelling library books. When her (admittedly ambitious) dreams of becoming a dragon slayer didn't pan out, she instead turned to writing books. She now lives in sunny California, and in addition to writing, can be found herding cats, looking at birds, and falling down research rabbit holes. She is the author of The Bone Shard Emperor, published by Orbit.

Andrea is on Facebook.

Tasha Suri is the award-winning author of The Books of Ambhaduology (Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash) and the upcoming epic fantasy The Jasmine Throne, published by Orbit. She is an occasional librarian and cat owner. She has won the Best Newcomer (Sydney J. Bounds) Award from the British Fantasy Society and has been nominated for the Astounding Award and Locus Award for Best First Novel. When she isn’t writing, Tasha likes to cry over TV shows, buy too many notebooks, and indulge her geeky passion for reading about South Asian history. She lives with her family in a mildly haunted house in London.

Tasha is on Twitter and Instagram.

Pull up a rocket-propelled pew and join Shoreline of Infinity for another great night of science fictional stories, poetry, music and drama!

MC and bad jokes: Russell Jones

Music: Post Coal Prom Queen

Poetry: Sadie Maskery

Prose: Michael F. Russell, DA Xiaolin Spires, Andrew J Wilson

Drama: The Infinitesimals

Music, readings and terrible jokes await you!

About the event:

Running time: 90 minutes

Tickets: FREE/ £3 / £5

The event will be live on Zoom.

This event starts with a Brave New Words reading from M.E. Rodman

Caught between morale, politics and love, how can you be sure what to fight for?

In C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken, two women clash in a world full of rebellion and espionage and are caught between colonialism and revolution in a story rife with familial, political and romantic tension.

The Burning God, the exciting final volume in R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War trilogy, combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect.

About the event:

Chaired by Katalina Watt

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

This event includes a Brave New Words reading from M.E. Rodman

About the authors

Cherae C. L. Clark is the author of The Unbroken, the first book in the Magic of the Lost trilogy and editor of the British Fantasy Award-winning PodCastle. She graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, PodCastle, Uncanny, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

C.L. Clarke is on Twitter.

Rebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and the Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.

Rebecca is on Twitter.

Brian Catling and Oliver Langmead are true masters in creating dreamlike plot sequences set in surreal worlds:

Brian Catling’s Hollow is an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to deliver a church’s ultimate power as the decadence of carnival gives way to the gravity of lent and the mystic landscape grows ravenous. 

And Oliver Langmead’s Birds of Paradise is a fantasy about the Biblical Adam recovering the lost pieces of the Garden of Eden, determined to save the pieces of his lost home from Mankind and rebuild Paradise.

About the event:

Chaired by Jim Taylor from Lighthouse, Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

About the authors:

Brian Catling is a poet, sculptor, painter, and performance artist. He makes installations and paints portraits of imagined Cyclops in egg tempera. Catling has had solo shows at the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Arnolfini in Bristol, England; the Ludwig Museum in Aachen, Germany; Hordaland Kunstnersentrum in Bergen, Norway; Project Gallery in Leipzig, Germany; and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England. He is the author of The Hollow.

Oliver K. Langmead lives and writes in Glasgow. His long-form poem, Dark Star, featured in the Guardian’s Best Books of 2015, and his new book, Birds of Paradise, is arriving March 2021. Oliver is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Glasgow, where he is researching terraforming and ecological philosophy, and in late 2018 he was the writer in residence at the European Space Agency’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne.

Join our 2021 judges Cat Hellisen, Oliver Langmead and Noel Chidwick to celebrate this year's Cymera Prize for Speculative Short Fiction.

We will chat about this year’s shortlist, share some top-tips for short fiction writers and reveal the winner.

With a reading of the winning story.

About the event:

Running time: 60 minutes

The event premiered on YouTube. and is free to watch: https://youtu.be/CDAk0AeEZxY

Join the journey and discover your destiny!

In Caroline Logan’s The Cauldron of Life a war between Heaven and Earth is brewing, the lines between good and evil are blurring, and Ailsa must decide where she stands.

And the forces of light and darkness clash once again in Katy Rose Pool’s As The Shadow Rises - can the approaching Age of Darkness be stopped or will it be unleashed?

About the event:

Chaired by Eleanor Pender

Running time: 60 minutes

Tickets: £3 / £5 (plus 50p booking fee)

The event will be live on Zoom.

Caroline Logan is a writer of Young Adult Fantasy. Her debut novel, The Stone of Destiny, is the first in The Four Treasures series. Caroline is a high school biology teacher who lives in the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland, with her fiancé and dogs, Ranger and Scout. Before moving there, she lived and worked in Spain, Tenerife, Sri Lanka and other places in Scotland. She graduated from The University of Glasgow with a bachelor’s degree in Marine and Freshwater Biology. In her spare time she tries to ski and paddle board, though she is happiest with a good book and a cup of tea.

Caroline is on Twitter and Instagram.

Katy Rose Pool was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in history, Katy spent a few years building websites by day and dreaming up prophecies by night. Currently, she resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she can be found eating breakfast sandwiches, rooting for the Golden State Warriors, and reading books that set her on fire.

Katy Rose is on Twitter and Instagram.

The looming global climate crisis and its linked ecological catastrophes have long been featured in amazing works of (eco-)fiction: Lauren James’ Green Rising, Bijal Vachharajani’s A Cloud Called Bhura, Clara Hume’s Birdsong and James Bradley’s Ghost Species splendidly interwave reality and fantasy to reveal the truth about our climate and what it means to be human in the 21st century.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Climate Fiction Writers League. Founded by Lauren James and bringing together over 100 writers from all over the world, the Climate Fiction Writers League aims to raise awareness of climate change, and encourage action at the individual, corporate and government levels.

Visit the website to meet the writers and discover a whole host of brilliant writing and resources.

Running time: 60 minutes

The event premiered for free on YouTube.

After the premiere, the event will be hosted on the Member Area of the Cymera website.