Scott Westerfeld is best known in the Steampunk circles for his Leviathan trilogy, a retro-futuristic retelling of World War I, illustrated by Keith Thompson and featuring adventure, walking machines, and living airships.
As an author of twenty-five novels, five for adults, and the other twenty for young adults, Westerfeld’s work is expansive and he is widely known for the Uglies quartet, set in a future where cosmetic surgery is compulsory at age sixteen. Additionally, he has penned the Zeroes trilogy, written with Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti, about six teens with strange powers in a small city in California; and the Midnighters trilogy, about five teenagers for whom time freezes every night. My standalone works include four novels set in contemporary New York: So Yesterday, Peeps, The Last Days, and Afterworlds.
Westerfeld’s books have won the Philip K Dick Special Citation, the Aurealis Award, the Victorian Premier’s Award, and have been named NY Times Notable Books and BBYA Top Ten Children’s Books of the Year. I have contributed nonfiction to Nerve, BookForum, the scientific journal Nature. He claims, however, “My greatest accomplishment is, of course, my three Powerpuff Girl choose-your-own-adventure books.” 🙂
Learn more about Scott Westerfeld at ScottWesterfeld.com
Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, ghost tour guide and the award-winning, bestselling author of over fourteen Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy, Supernatural Suspense and Non-Fiction books for adults and teens with publishers such as Tor, Sourcebooks and Kensington Books. A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, co-authored with Andrea Janes, is a 2022 Bram Stoker Award finalist for “Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction”. The book explores the intersection of women’s history and ghost stories.
Her Strangely Beautiful saga, beginning with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, hit Barnes & Noble and Borders Bestseller lists and garnered numerous regional genre awards. Tor Books notes Strangely Beautiful as a “foundational text of Gaslamp Fantasy” and new, revised editions are now available via Tor. Darker Still hit American Bookseller’s Association’s “Indie Next List”, was a Scholastic Book Club “Highly Recommended” title and a Daphne du Maurier award finalist.
The Spectral City was a # 1 bestseller across several genres and digital platforms. A 4-time Prism Award winner for excellence in the genre of Fantasy Romance, Leanna’s short stories have been featured in notable anthologies and her books have been selected for national book club editions as well as translated into many languages. She lectures on Gothic fiction and ghostly themes for prominent institutions such as New York University, Miami University and at conventions, libraries and conferences around the country.
A proud member of Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA, Mystery Writers of America, SFWA, Historical Novel Society, International Thriller Writers and The Dramatists Guild, she lives in New York where she is a licensed NYC tour guide working with Boroughs of the Dead and has been featured on television in Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown, discussing Victorian Spiritualism. She tours a one-woman show as 19th century designer Clara Driscoll and is represented by Sara Megibow and Chelsea Hensley of the KT Literary Agency.
