Recorded live at The Lost Church in San Francisco, July 20th, 2025 ABOUT THE AUTHORS HELENE WECKER is a local Bay Area author, who grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, a small town north of Chicago, and received her Bachelors in English from Carleton College in Minnesota. After graduating, she worked a number of marketing and communications jobs in Minneapolis and Seattle before deciding to return to her first love, fiction writing. Accordingly, she moved to New York to pursue a Masters in fiction at Columbia University. She now lives near San Francisco with her husband and daughter. Her first novel, the highly acclaimed The Golem and the Jinni, was published in April 2013 by HarperCollins. The Golem and the Djinni won the 2014 Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, was nominated for the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the 2013 James Tiptree Jr. Award. It placed 2nd in the 2014 Locus Award for Best First Novel and the 2013 Goodreads Choice Award for Debut Author, and 3rd in the 2013 Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy. Its sequel, The Hidden Palace, was published in 2021, and won a 2021 National Jewish Book Award. It was also selected for the 2021 One Bay One Book selection with the Jewish Community Library, a year-long conversation connecting Bay Area readers through discussions and events centered around a selection of current Jewish literature and its themes. And – EXCITING! Wecker is currently working on the third book! JULIA VEE loves stories of magic and monsters. Add East Asian dishes to the mix and you have the flavor profile of her writing. Julia’s academic focus on Asian Studies at U.C Berkeley only deepened her appreciation for the history and lore of that region. Though she has spent over two decades as a trial lawyer in Silicon Valley, she has always nurtured her creative spark, all the while teaching courses on business and property law as an adjunct faculty member in colleges and law schools. Outside of the courtroom, her heart beats strongest for the fantastical. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise residential workshop. She often writes with co-author Ken Bebelle to craft fantasy adventure stories with East Asian elements. Their works include the Seattle Slayers series and their forthcoming trilogy, beginning with Ebony Gate, debuted from Tor in July of 2023, with Blood Jade published in July of 2024. The final book in the trilogy, Pearl City, is out now! A lifelong fan of comics, Julia met her spouse over a shared love of the medium. She is passionate about rescue dogs, knitting, and soup. Her fandoms include Elfquest, Avatar the Last Airbender, Kate Daniels, the Witcher, and Shang-Chi. Learn more at juliavee.com. KEN BEBELLE, in his own words — Many kids who love science fiction become engineers or astrophysicists or comic book artists. I turned my childhood love of Star Wars into a career in prosthetics. With a degree in Cybernetics, I spent over twenty years specializing in upper limb replacement, fitting patients with everything from traditional body-powered prosthetics, to the latest myoelectric technology. Star Wars was a good influence on me. Since I’ve always been an avid reader of fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, and comic books, it made perfect sense that I would also write SFF. My writing partner, Julia Vee, and I first wrote together in the eighth grade, trading a floppy disk back and forth in the school hallways like spies passing state secrets. Together, Julia and I love creating rich, immersive worlds filled with the heroes and monsters from our dreams. Thank you for coming to visit our flights of fancy!