Maksym Van Shamrai was born in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and completed his thesis for his PhD in Culturology from the National Academy of Culture and Arts Management of Kyiv. He has lived in Spain since 2011, where he writes science fiction that draws on Eastern European literary tradition, philosophical anthropology, and the experience of displacement. Scions of the Last Hope is his debut novel.

Douglas Stuart McDaniel is a writer of historical, speculative, and Southern noir fiction rooted in place, power, and moral consequence. His work examines how communities remember, what they choose to bury, and what eventually surfaces despite their efforts to contain it. His fiction is concerned less with redemption than with reckoning: the cost of belonging, the price of silence, and the truths cities and towns depend on but refuse to name.

McDaniel splits his time between Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and his studio in Barcelona, Spain.