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Adam-Troy
Castro
Guest of Honor
(Adam-Troy Castro) (Patreon) Adam-Troy Castro’s checkered life has included stand-up comedy, cartooning, phone sales, a brief flirtation with boomerangs, and a stint as a silent figure in a darkened wall niche, quietly watching the riders go by in an amusement park house of horrors. made his first non-fiction sale to Spy magazine in 1987. Mostly, though, he’s been a writer. His twenty-sevenbooks to date include multiple short story collections, four Spider-Man novels, three novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom.
Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, one World Fantasy Award, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). His most recent release was the audio collection My Wife Hates Time Travel And Other Stories (Skyboat Media), which features thirteen hours of his fiction, including the new stories “The Hour In Between” and “Big Stupe and the Buried Big Glowing Booger.” Adam lives in Florida with his wife Judi and a trio of chaotic paladin cats.
For more information, and many links to stories available as both text and podcasts, check out Adam’s website and his Patreon page.
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Jodi
Krangle
Music Guest of Honor
(Jodi Krangle Music) (Voiceovers and Vocals) Jodi Krangle has been a singer since before she learned to talk and a voice actor since 2007. She works with clients from major brands all over the world doing commercials and narrations in industries like health care, charities & non-profits and the hospitality/travel market. Her weekly podcast, Jodi's Silver Linings, is an attempt to help fellow creatives be kinder to themselves through personal musings and interviews with folks other creative people might find inspiring. In 1994, she met two fellow creatives (Allison Durno & Debbie Ridpath Ohi) and they formed the Filk band, Urban Tapestry. They put out one tape, two CDs and one DVD together and guested at conventions across North American and Europe. They’ve also won several Pegasus awards, both separately and together.
Jodi was an early adopter of the internet and created an award-winning songwriting resource website called The Muse’s Muse in 1995. It helped her learn a lot about SEO.
In 2015, she put out her own album of jazz, blues and traditional tunes ( Time Will Tell – co-created with UK musician, Chris Conway) and she sings every year at the GAFilk Banquet in Atlanta, GA with a nine-piece jazz/swing/filk band called Play It With Moxie.
To top it all off, she loves comics, D&D, Firefly & Doctor Who.
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Renee
Babcock
Fen Guest of Honor
Renee has been active in the Fandom Association of Central Texas, Inc. since earning her Ph.D. with a major in Musicology. She attended her first ArmadilloCon in 1999 where she learned about con running by attending the planning meetings and helping out wherever she could. She co-chaired her first ArmadilloCon in 2001 with Lori Wolf, and despite the difficulties of that year post-9/11, she agreed to do so again several more years, plus solo chairing in 2007. She has also been a member of the board of FACT, where she has held a variety of posts, including Social Director, Treasurer, and Chair.
These days Renee is more active with the World Fantasy Convention. She co-chaired WFC in 2006 with Fred Duarte, and most recently co-chaired WFC in 2017 with Jonathan Miles. She is also the current Secretary of the World Fantasy Board.
Renee currently works as an Academic Advising Coordinator in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Austin at Texas and is very excited to be working with actual rocket scientists. She rides the bus to work and gets a lot of reading time done during her daily 2 hours round trip commute.
(Photo: Holly Bhasin)
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Chaz
Kemp
Artist Guest of Honor
(Chaz Kemp) (Patreon) Chaz Kemp has amassed quite a list of talents, including acting (he won an Emmy for voiceover work), playwriting, directing, song writing, singing, drumming, fencing, and cat herding (you should see his scars). He has now decided to settle down in the suburbs of Denver with his wife, a changeling from the court of the Morrigan who goes by the mundane name of Carolyn Kay. Together they’re working on bringing the world of Ashelon to life through stories and an oracle deck. You can find Chaz’s art across the globe on magazine and book covers, album art, role-playing game manuals, convention posters and badges (including this year’s), logos, clothing, tattoos and more.
If you’d like to support Chaz’s artistic endeavors please visit the Ashelon booth in the dealer’s room, check out his art in the Art Show, or head on over to Patreon and throw some of your hard earned dollars his way.
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Benjamin
C.
Kinney
Science Guest of Honor
( Benjamin C. Kinney) ( Twitter) Benjamin C. Kinney is a SFF writer and a 2018 Hugo Award finalist as assistant editor of the science fiction podcast magazine Escape Pod. His short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Diabolical Plots, and many other magazines and anthologies. You can find him and his work at the links above.
As the neuroscientist Benjamin Philip, he leads the Neuroscience & Rehabilitation laboratory at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. His lab studies how the brain controls movement, and how those brain mechanisms change after changes in the body. His primary focus is how the brain’s hemispheres interact to produce handedness, and how we can alter that process to help people with injuries to their dominant hand. His research involves neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and behavioral techniques to study people with nerve injuries or amputations. He no longer creates cyborg monkeys, after too many nights in graduate school giving them Prozac.
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Maurice
Broaddus
Toastmaster
(MauriceBroaddus.com) (Patreon) A community organizer and teacher, his work has appeared in magazines like Lightspeed Magazine, Weird Tales, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Cemetery Dance, Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. His books include the urban fantasy trilogy, The Knights of Breton Court, the steampunk novella, Buffalo Soldier, the steampunk novel, Pimp My Airship, and the middle grade detective novel, The Usual Suspects. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Dark Faith: Invocations, Streets of Shadows, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror, and Apex Magazine. Learn more at his web site.
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Kevin
Ikenberry
Special Workshop Guest
(Kevin Ikenberry) (Twitter) Kevin Ikenberry is a life-long space geek and retired Army space operations officer. A former manager of the world-renowned U.S. Space Camp program, Kevin has a distinguished background in space science education. His debut science fiction novel Sleeper Protocol was a Finalist for the Colorado Book Award and called “an emotionally powerful debut” by Publisher’s Weekly. He is a core author of the wildly successful Four Horsemen Universe where he’s written the novels Peacemaker, Honor The Threat, Stand Or Fall, Deathangel, Redacted Affairs (with Kevin Steverson) and Enforcer (with Quincy J. Allen). Kevin’s other novels include Vendetta Protocol, Runs In The Family, and Super-Sync. In addition to writing novels, he regularly teaches workshops to writers of all levels. Kevin lives in Colorado with his family.
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