Shannon Lee Barry is a LA-based writer, actor and author who has developed a loyal following on social media with her musings about her life, her own personal love story, and her chronic illness.

She grew up in coastal Texas, earned a BFA from the University of Texas and now lives in Los Angeles where she spends her days reading, writing, and searching for shell-shaped accessories to wear to her local renaissance faire. Her first poetry collection, ‘In The Event This Doesn’t Fall Apart’ was published in 2020. She is currently working on her first novel.

Agent Contact: Bianca Gillam

Cierra Block is an artist, illustrator, and urban explorer with a passion for uncovering the hidden gems and local haunts that bring a city to life. Her infectious enthusiasm and captivating illustrations are on display in her series of travel guides, Block By Block, which takes readers on a delightful journey through the vibrant neighbourhoods of London, New York, Paris, and beyond, with more cities in the works.

Cierra’s unique approach to travel guides goes beyond the usual tourist traps. With her charming illustrated maps and insider tips, she invites readers to experience the cities like a local, from the perfect cup of coffee to the most beautiful hidden garden. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or a first-time visitor, Cierra’s guides will inspire you to explore beyond the main avenues and discover the magic that lies within each city.

Agent Contact: Stevie Finegan

United Kingdom & Translation only, on behalf of The McCarthy Literary Agency.

Steven Brust is the author of over 30 novels, including the best-selling Vlad Taltos series. He lives in Minneapolis with a cat, a dog, and a parrot. He’s enthusiastic amateur drummer, singer-songwriter, and poker player. He is not fond of avocados.

For more on his writing and books, you can check out his website.

Author Photo Credit: David Dyer-Bennet

Travis is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his very patient family and their small, nervous dog.

LEGENDS & LATTES is his debut novel — it is a finalist for the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

His second novel, BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST is out now, and is a prequel to LEGENDS & LATTES.

Agent Contact: Stevie Finegan

Alice Bell grew up in South West England, in the sort of middle-of-nowhere where teenagers spend their weekends drinking Smirnoff Ice in a field that also has at least one horse in it.

She has previously worked in shops selling boat shoes and polo shirts to people who don’t own boats or play polo, but since 2016 she has worked full time as a video games journalist. In 2018 she became the deputy editor of Rock Paper Shotgun, a popular and respected PC gaming website, where you can find the many excellent reviews and serious articles about hot vampires that she has written. In 2019 she was named one of the 100 most influential women in the UK games industry.

After spending several years in London, Alice now lives in Brighton, where she reads a lot of books, makes crochet animals, and plays video games where you can set things on fire and make elves kiss. She has probably read more detective fiction and watched more episodes of Midsomer Murders than you.

Bell’s debut mystery, GRAVE EXPECTATIONS has been acquired by Corvus (UK) and Knopf (North America), and is due to be published in October 2023.

Agent Contact: Stevie Finegan

You have a large derelict house at the end of your road, you always drive passed, slowly, looking in to see if you can catch a glimpse of what’s inside, or, maybe who?

You briefly think what could have happened to the house to make it this way, was there a family? Where are they now? What did it look like before?

A familiar song comes on the radio and you forget about the house, until the next time you drive past and you repeat the process.

Rebecca Brownlie travels the island of Ireland with her camera documenting properties through photography and gathering the history of who was there before us.

So far her work has appeared in The Daily Mail, The Metro, The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Star, The Belfast Telegraph, The Sunday World, BBC Radio Ulster, Bored Panda, Lad Bible and The Daily Smile Podcast. She has two upcoming television appearances, an episode of BBC’s ‘Barra on the Foyle’ documentary and ‘Abandoned Ulster’ episode produced by Double Band Films.

To find out more and see more examples of her photography visit: https://www.abandonedni.com/

Agent Contact: Stevie Finegan

Zeno is pleased to represent the estate of the late Algis Budrys. Here are a few words about A.J. courtesy of his wife, Edna…

Algis Budrys – 1931-2008

Legal name – Algirdas Jonas Budrys.  A.J. to his friends.

Algis Budrys was a Renaissance man.  His father was in the Lithuanian diplomatic corps and the family came to the United States when Algis was five years old which is when and where he learned English.

His first love was writing stories but he was also an editor, a critic and reviewer, a teacher of aspiring writers, and a publisher.

In the sixties, he worked in public relations for advertising firms for an assortment of products such as pickles and tuna fish, and for International Harvester for RVs and 4-wheel drive vehicles.

He dabbled in painting and sold some of his pictures.  He built and repaired bicycles for the family and the neighborhood kids and also wrote a book about how to do it which was published by Rand McNally.  He loved to drive and spent much time on the road.  Sometimes, if he was having trouble working out story problems, he would go for a drive in the middle of the night and come home with the solution.

People who read his stories but didn’t know him might think he was a somber person because of the difficulties his characters faced but he had a wonderful sense of humor that seldom got into his works.

He was married for almost 54 years and had four sons and two grandchildren.

• Click here for the Wikipedia entry for Algis Budrys
• The Guardian obituary for Algis Budrys

Agent Contact: John Berlyne

United Kingdom and British Commonwealth only: Represented in these territories on behalf of Jabberwocky Literary Agency.

Marie Brennan is the author of nine novels, including the Doppelganger and Onyx Court (Orbit) series. WITH FATE CONSPIRE, the final novel in the Onyx Court series, was Kirkus Review’s Best Fiction of the Year in 2011. She has won two Isaac Asimov Awards for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction, and a Fantasy Writing Grand Prizes in 2003. Marie has also received multiple honourable mentions for Year’s Best Science Fiction and Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror.

Brennan holds a joint BA in anthropology/archaeology, and folklore & mythology from Harvard University. She’s been writing fantasy since she was nine or ten years old, and blames this fact on Diana Wynne Jones. She is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material to use in her fiction. Titan Books began re-issuing Marie’s Onyx Court series in the UK in 2015. Her short stories have appeared in more than a dozen print and online publications.

Marie’s Memoirs of Lady Trent fantasy series, featuring Lady Trent’s exciting adventures in the study of dragons, is published in the UK by Titan Books — all six books are out now.

THE WAKING OF ANGANTYR, a new fantasy novel, is due to be published by Titan Books in 2023.

Marie Brennan’s website is Swan Tower.

Agent Contact: Stevie Finegan

Jim Blaylock’s credentials and achievements are almost too many to list! He is the author of nearly twenty published novels and numerous shorter works. His 1978 story ‘The Ape-Box Affair’ is acknowledged as the first Steampunk story and the many further adventures of his much loved character Langdon St. Ives, in both shorter and longer forms (notably in the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel HOMUNCULUS and LORD KELVIN’S MACHINE) have made him the central figure in the original Steampunktriptych alongside Tim Powers (also represented by Zeno in the UK) and K.W. Jeter. He continues to collaborate with Powers, maintaining a partnership that has lasted since the two met in college back in the mid-70s and one only occasionally hampered by the interference of William Ashbless.

Blaylock has received multiple nominations for the World Fantasy Award, winning it on two occasions – for short story PAPER DRAGONS and his collection THIRTEEN PHANTASMS. Other novels include THE DIGGING LEVIATHAN, THE LAST COIN, ALL THE BELLS ON EARTH, THE PAPER GRAIL, NIGHT RELICS, WINTER TIDES,  THE RAINY SEASON, and THE KNIGHTS OF THE CORNERSTONE.  Over the years, his work has consistently ranked the highest positions in the annual LOCUS Magazine poll, and his story UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS was included in Prize Stories 1990, the O. Henry Awards.

‘I have admired Jim’s work for over two decades now,’ says Zeno agent John Berlyne. ‘In fact – gushing fanboy that I am – I realise I’ve read every word of  his published fiction! Aside from being, by a country mile, the best short fiction writer I’ve ever come across, he is, and remains, a truly original voice – unique in fact – and a hugely respected and cherished genre figure.’

James P. Blaylock lives in Orange, CA with his wife, Viki. He teaches creative writing at Chapman University where he is Assistant Professor of English.

In 2013, Titan Books re-issued Blaylock’s HOMUNCULUS and LORD KELVIN’S MACHINE. To coincide with the release, Titan also published THE AYLESFORD SKULL, the first full-length Langdon St. Ives novel in 21 years! Titan Books has also published a fourth novel in the series, BENEATH LONDON. Many of Blaylock’s Langdon St. Ives short stories are also now available in eBook format.

Blaylock’s latest novel is PENNIES FROM HEAVEN.

Agent Contact: John Berlyne

Aliette de Bodard is a Computer Engineer who moonlights as a speculative fiction writer in her spare time. She graduated in 2007 from Ecole Polytechnique, one of France’s top engineering schools, and went on to find a job which involved two of her loves, mathematics and programming computers.

She was already writing science fiction and fantasy short stories during her studies, though it took her a few years to get them published. Over the course of her young career, Aliette has racked up a significant number of award nominations (Hugo, Nebula, etc.). She won Second Place in Writers of the Future in 2006. In 2013, she won a Nebula Award for her short story Immersion. Aliette won two 2015 BSFA Awards, for her novel THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS and for her short story THREE CUPS OF GRIEF, BY STARLIGHT (which also won a Spanish Ignotus Award in 2018). THE TEA MASTER AND THE DETECTIVE won a Nebula Award in 2019. Also in 2019, IN THE VANISHERS’ PALACE was nominated for a Lammy Award.

In 2022, Aliette was named one of the Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young Leaders.

The author’s latest two novels are THE RED SCHOLAR’S WAKE and A FIRE BORN OF EXILE. The author’s latest novellas are FIREHEART TIGER and NAVIGATIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as Interzone, Black Static, and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. She currently lives in Paris.

Half-French and half-Vietnamese, Aliette has a special interest in non-Western cultures, particularly Asia and Precolumbian America.

• Visit Aliette de Bodard’s web site
• Visit Aliette de Bodard’s blog
  

Agent Contact: John Berlyne

Author Photo Credit: Chloe Vollmer-Lo

United Kingdom and British Commonwealth only: Represented in these territories on behalf of  Jabberwocky Literary Agency.

Raised on a steady diet of fantasy novels, comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons, Peter V. Brett (“Peat” to his friends) has been writing fantasy stories for as long as he can remember. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Art History from the University at Buffalo in 1995, and then spent over a decade in pharmaceutical publishing before returning to his bliss. His début novel, THE PAINTED MAN (aka THE WARDED MAN in the US) was published in the UK (HarperCollins Voyager) in September 2008 to fantastic critical acclaim and  was named one of Amazon.co.uk’s 10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2008, and has been nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy.
The Demon Cycle series has (so far) sold in more than 20 countries.

THE DESERT SPEAR, the second book in the Demon Cycle, was published in the UK in 2010, and cemented Peter’s reputation and position as a leading talent in contemporary epic fantasy. The highly-anticipated third book in the series, THE DAYLIGHT WAR, was published in February 2013 by Harper Voyager UK. Both of these novels are international bestsellers, and have enjoyed top ten rankings in The Times as well as international rankings. Peter’s two novellas, THE GREAT BAZAAR and BRAYAN’S GOLD were also published as a collected edition in April 2013. In addition to his fiction, Peter has also written a handful of Red Sonja stories for Dynamite Comics.

Brett’s latest series, the Nightfall Saga, launched in 2021 with THE DESERT PRINCE. The second novel, THE HIDDEN QUEEN, is due to be published in the UK in 2024.

Peter lives in New York. He regularly posts on his website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Agent Contact: John Berlyne

Here are a bunch of links to online interviews with Peter…

• The Booklounge (Canada)
• Dave Brendon’s Fantasy and Sci-Fi Weblog
• aboygoesonajourney.com
• Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
• Fantasy Book Critic
• Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews

A life-long fan of Dungeons & Dragons, Peter took part in the ‘Author D&D’ Event that took place at Epic ConFusion, a video of which can be found here.