Artist Guest of Honor
Darcy Bell-Myers has been a professional illustrator for more than 30 years. She has illustrated more than 100 books as well as countless magazine and newspaper features, stickers, greeting cards, games, cartoons, websites, and educational software. She has also served as an adjunct faculty member in the Illustration Department of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
“Over the years I’ve worked on a variety of projects in a variety of mediums, though have come to specialize in making art for children. This does not mean that the work is less serious or important to me; indeed I consider work for children to be very important and very worthwhile. I try not to talk down to my audience and strive to communicate to them in the same way that I would to any adult audience. I always figure that if something seems humorous to me, it will be to the kids looking at my work too! Likewise if it seems to ring false to me, to be clichéd or too cutesy, my audience of children will be the first to discern this and unlike most adults will be sure to let me know!”
For further information and samples of Darcy’s work, please see: http://bellmyers.com.
Author Guest of Honor
Patricia “Pat” Christine Hodgell is an American fantasy writer and former academic. Hodgell taught in the English Department at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, but retired in 2006 to pursue a full-time writing career. She has won several awards for her works.
Partial Bibliography:
God Stalk (1982)
Dark of the Moon (1985)
Chronicles of the Kencyrath (1987)
Seeker’s Mask (1994)
Dark of the Gods (2000)
To Ride a Rathorn (2006)
plus a collection of short stories: Blood and Ivory (1994)
P.C. Hodgell Kencyrath page - https://sjclark.orpheusweb.co.uk/kencyr.htm
P.C. Hodgell at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._C._Hodgell
Media Guests of Honor
Bradley Galey is born and raised in Pomona California.
“I have worked in entertainment since 2000, my first gig was a Whoop Ass Chili commercial. From there I worked at Disneyland as The #1 Donald Duck and also the lovable Dopey. Taking after my dads 35 year career as the famous Duck!I also worked at Universal Studios Hollywood. I left amusement parks and started a 13 year run with The Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. During that time I have appeared on The MTV Video Music Awards with Kevin Hart, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Conan, Americas Best Dance Crew, The Ones, Still Waiting, Brospehs, The Mandalorian Season 1&2, The Book or Boba Fett Season 1. ”
Christine Galey is born and raised in Pomona California.
“I have worked in entertainment since 2012. My first gig was working at Universal Studios Hollywood as a suit performer “scare actors.” I played the character of Chuckie Bride “Tiffany Bride” and a zombie. From there, I got an offer working out of the county at Universal Studio Japan. I was hired as a Entertainer performance character named “Moppy”in a Sesame Street show and also “Chopper” in The One Piece show. In 2014, I booked The Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring the Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall. I was a Principal Actor, playing one of the Santa’s elf and also the fussy Baby Bear in the Nutcracker number. During the year 2015, I appeared in a reality television show. “The Little Women of New York” show as myself. They had a little women fashion show in NYC and I was one of the models. In 2017, I was hired in at The Disneyland Resort Entertainment Department as a Cosmetologist. (Where I make the magic happen.)
In the year of 2019, I was cast on the The Mandalorian Season 1 as an Astronaut and then I was booked on The Book of Boba Fett Season 1 as R2-D2, R5 and Jawa.”
Music Guest of Honor
MarsCon was introduced to Bonnie Gordon in 2016 when she first performed there in the Comedy Music Track along with her partner Xander Jeanneret as the duo “The Library Bards”.
Bonnie‘s many epic credits include the following: Being a regular performer at the world famous “Magic Castle"” in Hollywood for over 13 years; ABC‘s reality TV series The Quest where she became known as the Paladin of Everealm; Geek & Sundry‘s roleplayer gaming Star Trek series Shield Of Tomorrow where she played as Lieutenant Lark Sage; The Library Bards‘ two full albums of nerdy comedy parody music “Bardcore” and “BomBARDed” (available on Bandcamp) as well as many hilarious music videos; As a video game voice actor she plays Rainbow Mika in Street Fighter V, Silque in the Fire Emblem Heroes series, and Bounce Man in Mega Man 11, and many others; And as an animation voice actor she played multiple characters on Cartoon Network‘s Mighty Magiswords including Nana Mewfles, Candi Carrots, and Darlin‘ Narwhal Magisword, and she is the voice of the ship‘s computer, the USS Protostar, on Nickelodeon‘s Star Trek: Prodigy!
As well as appearing and performing at conventions all over the world regularly, Bonnie has been working on her debut solo album “Con Artist” following a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2021. The album will feature original songs alongside some “hint of nerdy” cover songs, some special guests and more. All of her friends and colleagues from the Funny Music Project (The FuMP .com) are thoroughly excited to have Bonnie Gordon make her return to MarsCon as our 2023 Music Guest Of Honor.
Robert P. King (known professionally as AstroBob), born in 1953, is an American photographer, writer, and an amateur astronomer. He publishes an astronomy blog called Astro Bob.
King moved to Duluth, Minnesota in 1979 to become a photographer for the Duluth News Tribune and became a photo editor in 1990, retiring in 2018. The darker skies of Duluth helped him renew his interest in astronomy. He taught community education astronomy classes at the University of Minnesota Duluth and Marshall Alworth Planetarium since 1992 and astronomy classes at Boulder Lake Environmental Learning Center since 2011.
King started his Astro Bob blog in 2008 to share knowledge on astronomy events and discoveries from NASA. His articles have also been published online with Sky & Telescope and Universe Today.
Partial Bibliography:
Night Sky With the Naked Eye (2016)
Wonders of the Night Sky You Must See Before You Die: The Guide to Extraordinary Curiosities of Our Universe (2018)
C. M. Alongi
Christina M. Alongi is a sci-fi/fantasy author and runs the YouTube channel C. M. Alongi, and has published several short stories and novellas. She is available for book signings, interviews, and conferences, and will be at MarsCon in Bloomington, MN, 2023. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, and when she’s not hiding from the real world in a fantasy realm, she’s getting tangled in knitting projects and protecting her furniture from her roommate’s evil cats. Her first full-length novel, Citadel will be published on June 20th, 2023. You can check out her website www.cmalongi.com and follow her on TikTok (@c.m.alongi_author).
Ruth Berman
2016 Guest of Honor
Ruth Berman has published fiction and poetry in many magazines and anthologies, including science fiction, fantasy, general, and literary publications. Her novel Bradamant’s Quest was published by FTL Publications, and she is one of the contributors to the anthology Lady Poetesses from Hell, by the LPFH. She is one of the co-authors of Autumn World by Joan M. Verba et al., and has written articles on sf/fantasy for many journals. Books she edited: Dear Poppa (MN Historical Society), The Kerlan Awards in Children’s Literature (Pogo Press), Sissajig and Other Surprises (short fantasy by Oz author Ruth Plumly Thompson). Aqueduct Press and Black Coat Press have published her translations of French fantasy (The Invisible Prince/The Prince of the Aquamarines, a pair of fairy tales by Louise Cavalier Levesque, and Trilby/The Crumb Fairy, fantasy stories by Charles Nodier, respectively). She is a longtime Twin Cities fan. Ruth was one of the founding members of The Rivendell Group and a founding member of Minn-Stf, the local Minnesota Science Fiction Society.
T. Aaron Cisco
T. Aaron Cisco is an Amazon Bestselling author, an award-winning tv producer, and former touring musician. In Spring and Summer of 2022, two of his recent books. The Unbanished and Rod String Nail Cloth: An Afrofuturist Mixtape, reached number one on both Amazon’s Top 100 Best Sellers in Black & African American Fantasy Fiction, and Top 100 Best Sellers in Science Fiction Anthologies lists (respectively). Later that year, three issues of his sci-fi serial, Big Ass Aliens, occupied three of the Top 5 slots of Amazon’s Top 100 Free Science Fiction Books. Additional accolades include, being featured by Hennepin County Libraries’ Minnesota Black Authors list, and being listed as one of Ten Black Change-Makers Influencing the Twin Cities Arts Scene by Minnesota Daily. He is the recipient of local Emmys, as well as the Society of Professional Journalists Page One Award. T. Aaron Cisco is an unabashed advocate of squee, and strives to eradicate and replace gatekeeping and discrimination with appreciation and inclusion.
MaryJanice Davidson
2018 Guest of Honor
MaryJanice Davidson is an American author who writes mostly paranormal romance, but also young adult literature and nonfiction. She is the creator of the popular Undead series. She is both a New York Times and USA today best seller. She won a 2004 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award and was nominated for the same award in 2005. Pamela Clare of USA Today wrote, “It’s Davidson’s humor, combined with her innate storytelling ability and skill with dialogue, that has lifted her from small presses to the big best-seller lists.”
Karl K. Gallagher
Karl K. Gallagher is an aerospace engineer who has worked as a systems engineer, performing data analysis for a major aerospace company. In the past he calculated trajectories for a commercial launch rocket start-up, operated satellites as a US Air Force officer, and selected orbits for government and commercial satellites. He’s been a panelist at several conventions (FenCon, ConDFW, SoonerCon, LibertyCon). Karl has also published 9 novels and 16 short
stories.
Eric M. Heideman
2020 Guest of Honor
Eric M. Heideman is a Minneapolis Roving Librarian. He founded Krushenko’s, a speculative fiction conversational space, in 1983, and continues to run it at several Minnesota/Wisconsin cons, including MarsCon. For many years he was the science fiction/fantasy reviewer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He founded the small press publication Tales of the Unanticipated (TOTU) for the Minnesota Science Fiction Society in 1986.
David Lenander
David Lenander is a long-time Mythopoeic Society member, and past Steward. He has served on most of the Mythopoeic Awards committees since their inception. For more than 45 years he has been the principal organizer of the monthly Rivendell Group discussions in Minnesota, and active in the Society apa discussions, especially Once Upon a Time, devoted to Children’s Fantasy.
Catherine Lundoff
2022 Guest of Honor
Catherine Lundoff is an award-winning queer writer, editor and publisher from Minneapolis where she lives with her wife, artist Jana Pullman, and the cats who own them. By day, she is a professional computer geek, and by night, she does…a lot of other things. She is the author of over 100 published short stories and essays which have appeared in such venues as Fireside Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, the SFWA Blog, Dream Foundry, Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives, American Monsters Part 2, World of Darkness: Ghost Hunters, Haunting Shadows (Wraith the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Anthology) and The Cainite Conspiracies (Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Anthology) and is the winner of a 2021 writer’s grant from Ladies of Horror Fiction.
Her books include the Wolves of Wolf’s Point Series: Silver Moon and Blood Moon, Unfinished Business: Tales of the Dark Fantastic, Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories and A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories. She is also the editor of the anthologies Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) and Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories and co-editor (with JoSelle Vanderhooft) of Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic. In addition, she has written erotica and erotic romance as Emily L. Byrne, including the novel Medusa’s Touch and the short story collections Desire and Knife’s Edge.
She is also the publisher at Queen of Swords Press, a genre fiction publisher specializing in fiction from out of this world. Queen of Swords Press publishes work by Jennie Goloboy, Rem Wigmore, A.J. Fitzwater, Heather Rose Jones, Alex Acks and Catherine’s own books, as well as work by other authors, including author Michael Merriam. She also teaches writing and editing workshops at the Rambo Academy, Springboard for the Arts, Clarion West (online) and other venues. Sometimes, she also sleeps, reads, goes to cons and performs in online amateur theatrical productions.
Queen of Swords Press: https://queenofswordspress.com
Author website: https://catherinelundoff.net
Michael Merriam
Michael Merriam is a speculative fiction author living in Minnesota. He has published four novels, two short story collections, four single-title novellas, a poetry collection, and over 100 pieces of short fiction and poetry. He has edited three anthologies. His novella, Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep, was long-listed for the Nebula Award in 2010. Michael is a member of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), the Artists with Disabilities Alliance, the Steampunk Artists and Writers Guild, and Story Arts Minnesota. He is Organizer Emeritus of the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers Visit his homepage at www.michaelmerriam.com.
G. David Nordley
2013 Guest of Honor
G. David Nordley was born and raised in Minneapolis and Golden Valley, Minnesota. His main interest as a writer is the future of human exploration and settlement of space, and his stories typically focus on the dramatic aspects of individual lives within the broad sweep of a plausible human future. His novella Kremer’s Limit, written with C. Sanford Lowe, appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of Analog. A collection of linked Mars-related stories was published as an electronic book by Scorpius Digital in September 2001, with a print version appearing in 2003 (sold out). His novel To Climb a Flat Mountain (first appearing as a serial in Analog) was published (ebook and print-on-demand) by Variations on a Theme Publishing. He is a four-time winner of the AnLab, the Analog reader’s award for best story or article of the year, and has also been a Hugo and Nebula award nominee.
Website: http://www.gdnordley.com
Kathryn Sullivan
2020 Guest of Honor
Kathryn Sullivan has been writing science fiction and fantasy since she was 14 years old. Having read her father’s collection of sf and fantasy, she started writing her own. The world set up in The Crystal Throne has been developing since then. Some of the short stories escaped into fan zines, print zines and ezines, but those were collected into Agents & Adepts. And now even more have been added to the expanded Agents, Adepts & Apprentices. She has an essay in the Hugo winning Chicks Dig Time Lords and reviews in Outside In and Outside In Boldly Goes: 117 New Perspectives on 117 Classic Star Trek Stories. “Search and Rescue” and “The Oracle of Cilens” are just a couple of her short stories. Any birdlike beings in her books only slightly resemble her cockatoo owner.
Joan Marie Verba
2001 Featured Guest
Joan Marie Verba earned a bachelor of physics degree from the University of Minnesota and attended the graduate school of astronomy at Indiana University, where she was an associate instructor of astronomy for one year. She has worked as a computer programmer, and health-weight loss coach. She currently works as a writer, an editor/publisher and a social media manager and mobile marketing consultant. An experienced writer, Joan is the author of the nonfiction books Voyager: Exploring the Outer Planets, Boldly Writing, and Weight Loss Success!, as well as the novels Countdown to Action!, Action Alert!, Deadly Danger!, Situation: Critical!, Extreme Hazard!, and Danger Zone! plus numerous short stories and articles…
David Walbridge
Ghost and humor writer, specalizing in books for business speakers, David Walbridge writes funny. He can be found in: bigfunshow.com, procomedywriting.com, plus Facebook, Twitter and whatever’s next. His shows include The Big Fun Show! and Dr. R.E. Cycle. He is a former Feast Master for the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and former Lead Teacher at American Comedy Writing Convention. If you have a play writing emergency, he's probably the guy to call.
“When Books Come Alive”
March 10 - 12, 2023
Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America
3800 American Blvd E
Bloomington, Minnesota
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