Steven Barnes - Author Co-GOH

Steven Barnes is a science fiction writer, lecturer, creative consultant, and human performance technician. He is married to author Tananarive Due. The couple live in Los Angeles. Barnes has a daughter, Lauren Nicole from his first marriage and a son, Jason, from his current marriage.

Barnes has had a varied education, including a secondary education at Los Angeles High School. He continued at Pepperdine University, majoring in Communication Arts. He is a certified hypnotherapist, trained at the Transformative Arts Institute in San Anselmo, California.

His true passion, other than writing, is martial and physical arts. He is a Black Belt in Kenpo Karate (Aikka style), and Kodokan Judo. He holds an instructor certificate in Wu Ming Ta, and has an instructor candidate ranking in Filipino Kali stick and knife fighting. He is an advanced student in Jun Fan Kickboxing (Bruce Lee method under Dan Inosanto), and is an instructor in Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan under Hawkins Cheung. He is also an intermediate student in self defense pistol shooting (Turnipseed modified Weaver method).

He also holds a Brown Belt in Shorenji Jiu Jitsu, and intermediate rankings in Tae Kwon Do and Aikido. He has additional (limited) experience in boxing, Western fencing, wrestling, Wing Chun Kung Fu, Shotokan Karate, and French Savate. He has completed the Yoga Works basic Hatha Yoga instructor program. He is presently studying Pentjak Silat (an Indonesian fighting system) with Guru Stevan Plinck, and Ashtanga Yoga (an aerobic form of yoga). He also practices martial arts with Scott Sonnon, as well as co-teaching a class called "The Path Workshop".

Tananarive Due - Author Co-GOH

Tananarive Due – pronounced tan-nah-nah-REEVE doo – is the American Book Award-winning author of nine books, ranging from supernatural thrillers to a mystery to a civil rights memoir.

Her newest novel, Blood Colony (June 2008), is the long-awaited sequel to her 2001 thriller The Living Blood and 1997’s My Soul to Keep, a reader favorite that Stephen King said “bears favorable comparison to Interview with the Vampire.” Blood Colony continues the saga of African immortals with healing blood.

Due also collaborates with her husband, novelist and screenwriter Steven Barnes. They recently sold their screenplay adaptation of her novel The Good House to Fox Searchlight studios. In the summer of 2007, Due and Barnes published their first mystery, Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel, which they wrote in collaboration with actor Blair Underwood. Publishers Weekly called Casanegra “seamlessly entertaining.” The series will continue with In the Night of the Heat, scheduled for publication later this year.

The Living Blood, which received a 2002 American Book Award, “should set the standard for supernatural thrillers of the new millennium,”said Publishers Weekly, which named The Living Blood and My Soul to Keep among the best novels of the year. The Good House was nominated as Best Novel by the International Horror Guild. The Black Rose, based on the life of business pioneer Madam C.J. Walker, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. My Soul to Keep and The Good House are both in film development at Fox Searchlight.

Due’s novel Joplin’s Ghost blends the supernatural, history and the present-day music scene as a rising R&B singer’s life is changed forever by encounters with the ghost of Ragtime King Scott Joplin. Due also brought history to life in The Black Rose, a historical novel based on the research of Alex Haley – and Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which she co-authored with her mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. Freedom in the Family was named 2003's Best Civil Rights Memoir by Black Issues Book Review. (Patricia Stephens Due took part in the nation’s first “Jail-In” in 1960, spending 49 days in jail in Tallahassee, Florida, after a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter).

In 2004, alongside such luminaries as Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, Due received the “New Voice in Literature Award” at the Yari Yari Pamberi conference co-sponsored by New York University’s Institute of African-American Affairs and African Studies Program and the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. has a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Leeds, England, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar. Due currently teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Due has also taught at the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s Writers’ Week, the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and the summer Imagination conference at Cleveland State University. She is a former feature writer and columnist for The Miami Herald. Due lives in Southern California with her husband, Steven Barnes; their son, Jason; and her stepdaughter, Nicki.

Tim Rickard - Artist GOH

Tim Rickard is an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic artist for the News & Record in Greensboro, North Carolina, as well as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist. He created Brewster Rockit so that he could tell his wife that watching old Star Trek episodes on TV instead of doing household chores is "research".

Christian B. McGuire - Fan GOH

Christian B. McGuire is a lifelong reader of SF and Fantasy, but he'll read pretty much anything someone suggests he'd enjoy. Christian's been active in fandom since the early '80s, joined the LASFS and Time Meddlers in 1986 and his fanac has been spiraling out of control ever since. He aspires to the title Senior Cult Leader (Retired). He failed to achieve this goal in late August of 2006, but keeps on trying. Despite therapy he's still keeping up that most expensive hobby; collecting chairs.

Christian can cavort and spin on a variety of subjects too numerous to list here, but a modest selection includes fandom, clubs, convention running, Hard Core Fandom(tm), fanzines, reading, YA s.f.!, Animé, TV (True Blood, Firefly, BSG, Dr. Who & Torchwood, etc.) & movies old and new.