Dr. Rob Pyatt calls himself a stand-up scientist. By day, he’s a clinical scientist whose medical specialty is the use of molecular technologies to find the causes of genetic disorders. For sixteen years he served as an independent consultant on the use of genetic evidence in court cases and he has held academic positions at Ohio State University, the University of South Dakota, and Kean University. In addition to his clinical work, Rob’s also a research scientist and his projects have been featured online at Forbes and Discover Magazine. By night, Rob’s an award-winning science educator including organizing science pubs and science festivals. He’s also the co-host of the Trackside Science podcast with Dr. Jeff Mahr. Rob’s passion is his Weird Science workshops which he’s presented for audiences across the USA and the UK.

Jennifer Brozek is an award-winning author, editor, and tie-in writer. A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, Never Let Me Sleep, and The Last Days of Salton Academy were finalists for the Bram Stoker Award. She was awarded the Scribe Award for best tie-in Young Adult novel for BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and for Shadowrun: Auditions. Grants Pass won an Australian Shadows Award for best edited publication. A three-time Hugo finalist for Best Editor, Short Form and a finalist for the British Fantasy Award, Jennifer is an active member of SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She keeps a tight writing and editing schedule and credits her husband Jeff with being the best sounding board ever. Visit Jennifer's worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree .

John Chu is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer by night. His fiction has appeared in venues including Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Reactor. His translations have been published at venues including Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, including the Best Short Story Hugo for "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" and the Best Novelette Nebula for "If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You." The Subtle Art of Folding Space, his debut novel, was published by Tor in 2026.

Michael W Lucas is the author of fifty-odd books on topics ranging from Unix management to cozy mysteries. He's been a Unix user since 1987 and a sysadmin since 1995. If you ask him about how to make a living writing, BSD Unix, OpenZFS, DNS, martial arts, or pet rats he won't shut up, so consider yourself warned. He loathes the movie Laserblast so much, he wrote a spite book about it. Speaking of spite, he maintains the authoritative list of titles he's written in an SNMP table, but you can get a slightly obsolete version at mwl.io .

Phenderson Djéli Clark is the award-winning and Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon nominated author of the Abeni’s Song series, the novel A Master of Djinn, and the novellas The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Tor.com , Apex magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies including Hidden Youth and Black Boy Joy. When not writing speculative fiction, he is an academic historian whose research examines slavery and emancipation in the Black Atlantic. At present time, he resides in a small Edwardian castle in New England with his wife, twin daughters, and pet dragon (who suspiciously resembles a Boston Terrier). His next work, Abeni and the People Who Could Fly, will be released in September 2027.

Seanan McGuire, aka Mira Grant, aka A. Deborah Baker, does not sleep much, which accounts for the ridiculous amount of stuff she writes. The author of over a hundred published books across multiple names, she also writes for multiple popular media franchises, including Magic the Gathering and My Little Pony. Coincidentally enough, she also plays a lot of Magic, and probably has a Commander deck on her (low-3, constructed for chaos, no clear wincons). Seanan lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she spends her time writing, wandering into swamps, getting lost in cornfields, and playing with her ridiculously oversized cats (she has Maine Coons). She's very excited to be visiting Detroit, not least because she gets to visit an online friend's peacock farm while she's in town, and is looking forward to being covered in ridiculously oversized birds.

Tanuki Dan has had to cancel due to health issues with his partner. With any luck, he will be able to attend in 2027. A big thank you to him for even considering us.

Jim Butcher is the author of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera, and a new steampunk series, the Cinder Spires. His resume includes a laundry list of skills which were useful a couple of centuries ago, and he plays guitar quite badly. An avid gamer, he plays tabletop games in varying systems, a variety of video games on PC and console, and LARPs whenever he can make time for it. Jim currently resides mostly inside his own head, but his head can generally be found in the mountains outside Denver, Colorado. Jim goes by the moniker Longshot in a number of online locales. He came by this name in the early 1990’s when he decided he would become a published author. Usually only 3 in 1000 who make such an attempt actually manage to become published; of those, only 1 in 10 make enough money to call it a living. The sale of a second series was the breakthrough that let him beat the long odds against attaining a career as a novelist. All the same, he refuses to change his nickname. Please join us in welcoming Jim Butcher as a Guest of Honor for Penguicon 2026. More details will…

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Penguicon : To start us off, could you give us a quick self-introduction? Tracy Barnett : I am the "other" Tracy, no matter what your frame of reference is for Tracys, I'm the other one. I have been a tabletop role-playing game designer since 2012, so about 14 years now. I've also done professional podcast work; I was the project manager for the One Shot Podcast Network, working on a lot of independent tabletop RPG audio actual plays. More recently, I've done Magic: The Gathering videos on stream. Now, I'm a stay-at-home parent to two kids, and I do all this RPG stuff at the same time. I'm currently getting back in the saddle, because parenthood is a wild ride. Penguicon : Have you been to Penguicon before? Tracy Barnett : I was a special guest in 2022. It was a lovely time, but a very strange period in my life. When I got back home, we found out my wife was pregnant with our second child, which was a complete surprise. I actually had to leave the con early that Sunday because she'd had an accident at home involving a gash on her wrist from a can. I had…

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Heidi : Thank you so much for joining us, Ryan. To start off, could you give us an introduction to who you are and what you do? Ryan Rose : My name is Ryan Rose; I use he/him pronouns. I grew up in Florida and got out of there as quickly as I could. Growing up as a queer boy was hard at times, but I had a great support network. I was very happy to move to California. It was in California where I found my writing voice and was opened up to an entirely new world of food, which made its influence on the book. I’ve always been a reader of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Those stories have been with me since I was a little kid. I was always telling my own stories and seeing what I could get people to believe. As I was figuring out my path in college, I thought I would write as a hobby. Eventually, story after story, it got a little better. Something about 7 Recipes for Revolution just seemed to really strike true. It felt like "the one" in a way that the previous ones hadn’t. Today, I work…

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Con Saturday (03/27) afternoon-ish, we will have the Guests of Honor gathered in the lobby area near Reg to play Sentinels of the Multiverse. Open for all to spectate as our GoHs cooperate to defeat a villain!

On Thursday evening before con (03/26/26), we will be hosting a Guest of Honor dinner that is open to the community. A limited number of slots are available, but we would love to see as many of you as possible! This is one of the best opportunities to meet and greet our 2026 Guests of Honor . Dinner was $50 per plate, with add-on tickets sold through the Penguicon 2026 Sched site.

We all know Meph can DJ, but this year you can join him for a 3 hour add-on event, where you will build-and-take a 3D printed Bluetooth speaker! This is a fundraiser. It was going to be its own event, but due to time constraints we have decided to offer it during the con itself. The workshop costs $80 to build a base speaker, or $100 to build a premium speaker. The purchase of a regular con badge is still required to attend the con itself. Tickets were available through the Penguicon 2026 Sched site: Add On: Bluetooth Speaker (Basic) for the basic speaker ($80) Add On: Bluetooth Speaker (Premium) for the premium speaker ($100) You only need one add-on per attendee! Please direct questions to [email protected]

Lets have a very warm welcome for Penguicon 2026 newest Guest of Honor, David Weber! In his own words at davidweber.net : “Author’s Note [and excuse]: I don’t really do “biography” very well. So what I’m going to do here is to give you most of what I think of as the sort of biographical information people seem to be looking for, and also something a bit more rambling. What I’m really after is to provide a little feel of how and why I do what I do, and not just what I do. My family moved to Greenville, South Carolina, when I was about two years old. Before I started grammar school, my parents moved to just outside Simpsonville, South Carolina, where one of my first memories is “helping” my father clear the site of the house they later built. (Looking back, it’s remarkable to me how patient he was.) I attended Simpsonville Elementary School, Hillcrest Junior High School, and Hillcrest High School, graduating in 1970. My first two years of college were with the then brand-new Clemson extension program at Greenville Tech. I completed my undergraduate studies (not without a few adventures) at Warren Wilson College, and attended…

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Please join us in welcoming our latest Guest of Honor for 2026: Jennifer Blackstream! In her own words: “Jennifer Blackstream is a USA Today bestselling author of urban fantasy and fantasy romance. She is amazed and grateful to have made a writing career out of a Master’s degree in Psychology, hours of couch-detecting watching Murder She Wrote, and endless research into mythology and fairy tales. She firmly believes that whether it’s a village witch deciding she wants to be a private investigator, or a single mother having a go at being a full time writer, it’s never too late for a new adventure. A passionate rock hounder, Jennifer can often be found wandering the foothills of Colorado looking for more geologic treasures. When she’s not looking for rocks, Jennifer can be found watching cozy mysteries or shark movies with her husband, fellow author Jim Butcher, or building another Post-it filled, efficiency-improving binder for life or writing. Jennifer loves to talk about shark movies and Post-its, and she can ramble a bit. You’ve been warned.” You can find out more about Jennifer and her work here !

A warm Penguicon welcome to our newest Guest of Honor: Tracy Barnett! In their own words: “No matter your frame of reference for any Tracy, I’m the other one. Always there, always memorable, always me. I’ve been a creative professional for over 10 years. I don’t like the term “creative professional” but there’s not much better to cover everything. I’ve written and published tabletop rolepaying games for that entire time. You can find my work at my itch store, or from publishers like Evil Hat and Paizo. I’ve also edited a number of games, including Descent Into Midnight, Turn, and Velvet Generation. For the last five or so years, I’ve also worked as an audio editor. My archives are currently down, but I’ve done hundreds of hours of TTRPG actual play. Most recently, I’ve worked for The One Shot Podcast Network, the first season of The Secret of St. Kilda and The Cryptonaturalist. Beyond that, I also dabble in fiction, music (acoustic guitar and electronic synthy stuff), and graphic design. I also really love Magic: The Gathering and regularly play Commander and in a sealed league that I enjoy a lot. I’m very lucky to be able to work on…

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The Penguicon Team is excited to announce our latest Guest of Honor for 2026: Ryan Rose! In his own words: Ryan Rose is a speculative fiction author and game designer. His debut fantasy trilogy, WHAT WE EAT consists of SEVEN RECIPES FOR REVOLUTION, EIGHT TASTES OF TREACHERY (forthcoming Summer 2026), and NINE COURSES OF CALAMITY (forthcoming Summer 2027). His games work has been published with Portent Press, Spectre Creations, and broadly online. He currently lives in Oakland, CA with his partner and half-demon dog. Find out more about Ryan here !

We have our first Guest of Honor for Penguicon 2026! Please join us in welcoming Tanuki Dan. In their own words: “I am Tanuki Dan! I play videogames, make music parodies, perform silly songs, and stream stuff on Twitch! You will generally find Mario Maker 2 and Nintendo content here, so if you are a fan of the things I listed prior I think you will have a good time here!” You can check out some of their stuff here ! There are more feelers out, and we will announce them as soon as confirmations are made. If you have a favorite idea, let me know at [email protected] .