NerdCon: Stories 2016

Claudia is a wizard punk, wizard activist, and enthusiasm enthusiast. She works for the Harry Potter Alliance, leads the Wizard Punk movement for DIY creativity in fandom, and writes things.

Sydney Freeland is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker. Her debut feature film, Drunktown’s Finest, premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Prize and HBO Outstanding First Feature awards at LA Outfest 2014, as well as a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Feature. In 2016, she directed the web series Her Story, which was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Short Form... Read More →

Julián Gustavo Gómez is the Campus Engagement Manager at Define American, where he works on growing the Define American College Chapters program. The chapters are student-led initiatives using the power of stories to change the conversation on immigrants and identity in college communities around the country. Julián’s work is informed and inspired by his own immigrant story as an undocumented American and a DREAMer... Read More →

Cindy Pon is the author of Silver Phoenix (Greenwillow), named one of the Top Ten Fantasy and Science Fiction Books for Youth by Booklist, and one of 2009′s best Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror by VOYA. Her most recent novel, Serpentine (Month9Books), is a Junior Library Guild Selection and received starred reviews from School Library Journal and VOYA. The sequel, Sacrifice, releases this September. WANT, a near-future thriller set in... Read More →

Alyssa Wong studies fiction in Raleigh, NC, and really, really likes crows. Her story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” won the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and her short fiction has been nominated for many other awards, including the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her work has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Nightmare... Read More →