Alyc Helms fled her doctoral program in anthropology and folklore when she realized she preferred fiction to academic writing. She dabbles in corsetry and costuming, dances Scottish Highland and Irish Ceili at Renaissance and Dickens fairs, gets her dander up about social justice issues, and games in all forms of media. She sometimes refers to her work as "critical theory fanfic," which is a fancy way to say that she is obsessed with liminality, gender identity, and foxes. She's a freelance RPG writer for Green Ronin, a graduate of Clarion West 2012, and her short fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction and Crossed Genres and will be appearing in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her first novel, The Dragons of Heaven, will be published by Angry Robot Books in June 2015. She can be found on Twitter @alychelms or at www.alychelms.com.