StarShipSofa Creators & Guests

Tony C. Smith is a gardener, YouTube content creator, and podcast creator. He posts videos to YouTube about allotment gardening. He hosts the podcast "Starship Sofa." He also runs the District of Dreams network, which includes the podcasts "Starship Sofa," "Tales to Terrify," "Crime City Central," and "Protecting Project Pulp."

Nikolle Doolin is a voice actor and writer.

Dave Robison is an avid Literary and Vocal Alchemist who pursues a wide range of creative explorations. A Brainstormer, Relentless Optimist, and “Keeper of the Buttery Man-Voice”, Dave's efforts to boost the awesomeness of the world can be found through his work at Wonderthing Studios. He’s currently shepherding multiple projects in the world: • ARCHIVOS, a story mapping and presentation tool• Manifest, a board game combining the positional strategy of chess with the fantastical diversity of Magic: The Gathering. • Story narration for numerous audio fiction podcasts and endeavors, including work with The Escape Artists series of podcasts (Pseudopod, Podcastle, EscapePod, and Cast of Wonders) as well as narrating books for J. Daniel Sawyer, James Silverstein, and more!• The Archivos Podcast Network featuring interviews and brainstorms with veteran authors

Brian is a voice actor living in Colorado. He narrates short fiction, audiobooks, and hosts the Dorky Geeky Nerdy Trivia Podcast. Reach out to him to narrate your next project at TheVoicesInMyHead.com

Dr. Amy H. Sturgis is an author, speaker and scholar of science fiction and fantasy studies and Native American studies.Sturgis has served on the advisory board of Mythopoeic Press, and contributed to the Hugo Award-winning StarShipSofa podcast and the Liberty and Power group weblog. She served as adjunct instructor at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, before becoming a professor at Belmont University.Sturgis is author of four books on U.S. presidential history and Native American studies, five edited works on science fiction and fantasy, and other scholarly and mainstream book chapters, articles and presentations. She has been interviewed on science fiction and fantasy topics by organizations including NPR.She regularly contributes to the podcast StarShipSofa.Sturgis received her Ph.D. in intellectual history from Vanderbilt University.

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge, Digital McLuhan, Realspace, McLuhan in an Age of Social Media, and Fake News in Real Context have been translated into 15 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999), Borrowed Tides, and The Plot to Save Socrates. He appears on CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the History Channel, and NPR. His 1972 album, Twice Upon A Rhyme, was re-issued in Japan and Korea in 2008, and in the U. K. in 2010. His first new album since 1972, Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, was released by Old Bear Records and Light in the Attic Records in 2020.

Lawrence P. Santoro was an author of horror and dark fantasy. He also hosted the weekly horror podcast, "Tales to Terrify."Before becoming a full-time writer, Santoro spent thirty years as a director, producer and actor in theater and television.Santoro's work has appeared in anthologies and horror fiction periodicals. His first novel, "Just North of Nowhere," was published in 2007. His first collection of short fiction, Drink for the Thirst to Come," was published in 2011.Santoro's novella "God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him" was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in 2001. He has also been nomination for his 2003 adaptation and audio production of Gene Wolfe's "The Tree Is My Hat."Lawrence Santoro died in 2014.

Aliette de Bodard is a science fiction writer. Although French is her first language, she writes in English.de Bodard works as a software engineer specialising in image processing.de Bodard is a graduate of École Polytechnique.

Jason Sanford is a science fiction author. He is best known for his short stories.Sanford's fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Year's Best SF 14, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and other anthologies. His first novel, "Plague Birds," was published in 2021. Sanford founded the magazine storySouth and ran their annual Million Writers Award for best online short stories.

Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since he was eighteen. He is the author of over five hundred short stories, nine thrillers, most recently Shelter and two fantasy series, The Books of Outremer and Selling Water by the River. As Daniel Fox he has published a Chinese-based fantasy series, beginning with Dragon in Chains, as Ben Macallan, an urban fantasy, Desdæmona.A British Fantasy Award winner, he has also published books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. His time as crimewriter-in-residence on a sculpture project in Sunderland resulted in the collection Blood Waters. His first play, A Cold Coming, was performed and then toured in 2007. He is a prizewinning ex-poet, and has been writer in residence at the University of Northumbria. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000.Chaz spent his childhood in Oxford, his adulthood in Newcastle, and now lives in California with his wife Karen, two squabbling cats, a turtle and a famous teddy bear.

Jeremy Szal is an author of dark science fiction and fantasy fiction. He describes his work as "spacepunk" or gothic space opera.Szal has published forty short stories. His first novel, "Stormblood," was published in 2020.Szal was the editor for StarShipSofa until 2020.Szal received his B.A. in Film Studies and Creative Writing from the University of New South Wales.

Seth Shostak is a senior astronomer for the SETI Institute and former director of the Center for SETI Research when it was a separate department.

David Barr Kirtley is an American short story writer and host of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast.His short fiction appears in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales, in online magazines such as Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show and Lightspeed, and on podcasts such as Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast.

Simon Hildebrandt is an author and narrator. Professionally, he is a web developer.Hildebrandt received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Dr. David Raiklen is a music composer and producer. He also hosts the radio show, "Classical Fan Club."

Gareth Lyn Powell is a science fiction author.Powell's first book, "The Last Reef and Other Stories," was published in 2008, and his first novel, "Silversands," was published in 2010.Powell’s short stories have appeared in Interzone, Solaris Rising 3, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. He has won the BSFA Award for Best Novel twice: for "Ack-Ack Macaque" in 2013 and for "Embers of War" in 2019.Powell studied humanities and creative writing at the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales).

Jeffrey Ford is an author, primarily of fantasy fiction. He also teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College.Ford's stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, MAD Magazine, Weird Tales, Clarkesworld Magazine, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Subterranean, Fantasy Magazine, and have been in collected in anthologies such as The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, New Jersey Noir, Stories, The Living Dead, The Faery Reel, After, The Dark, and The Doll Collection. His first novel, "Vanitas," was published in 1988.

Evo Terra is podcasting’s original professional contrarian. Ex-expat, skeptic, & often funny. CEO of Simpler Media. Hip he/him.