Joan Marie Verba
Joan Marie Verba earned a bachelor of physics degree from the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology and attended the graduate school of astronomy at Indiana University, where she was an associate instructor of astronomy for one year. Her career as a computer programmer lasted ten years. After being laid off twice from such jobs, she retrained as an editor and now she are one. She is the author of Boldly Writing (FTL Publications, 1996), and Voyager: Exploring the Outer Planets (Lerner Books, 1991), as well as numerous short stories and articles. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Tess Meara
Tess Meara is a business and technical writer and editor by trade and freelances widely for electronic and print publications. She is a founding member of the National Writers Union Twin Cities Local and a member of the World Wide Web Artists Consortium, the Society for Technical Communication, and the Horror Writers Association. Autumn World is the second genre novel she has published.

Deborah K. Jones
Deborah K. Jones is a writer, designer, and fiber artist. Creator of many award-winning costumes, she is a two-time Best in Show winner of the World Science Fiction Convention Masquerade. She has been a high school teacher, a curriculum researcher, a newsletter publisher, a database manager, a graphic designer, and a full -time mother of two. She is married to a professional astronomer and lives in Minnesota. Autumn World is her first published work of fiction.

Margaret Howes
Margaret Howes is a retiree who has become a storyteller in the Society for Creative Anachronism. She has had short stories published in The Tolkien Scrapbook and Sword and Sorceress VIII and is the author of the science fiction novel The Wrong World (FTL Publications, 2000). She has drawn maps for the books Murder at the War by Mary Monica Pulver, The Best of Leigh Brackett, and the Underwood-Miller edition of Showboat World by Jack Vance.

Ruth Berman
Ruth Berman was conceived in Texas, born in Kentucky, and has resided in Minnesota most of the rest of the time. As a middle child in a family that went in for reading aloud, she grew up hearing and speaking a wide variety of authors, such as Mother Goose, Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, Louisa May Alcott, and Christopher Morley. Her work has appeared in The Saturday Review, Amazing, Asimov's SF, Weird Tales, The Poet Dreaming in the Artist's House, Burning with a Vision, Aliens and Lovers, The Tolkien Scrapbook, New Worlds, Shadows, Mathenauts, Xanadu, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her book, Dear Poppa: The World War II Berman Family Letters (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997), was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.

Left: Ruth Berman, Right: Joan Marie Verba, Back: Deborah K. Jones, Front: Margaret Howes, Not shown: Tess Meara

The Aaardvark Writing Group
The Aaardvark Writing Group is the oldest extant SF writers' workshop in the Twin Cities. Founded in 1974 by Eleanor Arnason and Ruth Berman, it was originally nameless. As other groups became active, a name was needed, and "aaardvark" (with three A's) offered alphabetic advantages. The group has seen members through to publication of novels (SF, fantasy, mystery); non-fiction books and articles; short stories; and poetry. Some magazines and anthologies that have published Aaardvarks are: Amazing, Analog, Asimov's, Analog, F&SF, Hitchcock's, Tales of the Unanticipated; Free Amazons of Darkover, New Worlds, Sword and Sorceress, Time Frames, The Tolkien Scrapbook, and Xanadu. Several of the Aaardvarks decided to tackle writing a group novel as a project likely to be challenging, instructive, and fun-which it was. Stray factors keeping meetings alert have included tornadoes; cat-owning vs. cat-allergic members; novels read out of sequence; reports on recalcitrant markets and cooperative computers (and vice versa); and arguments over spaceships, planets, peoples, futures, pasts, and points of view.

ISBN 1-929611-02-1
Autumn World
by Aaardvark Writing Group