Ray Nayler is the author of the novel The Mountain in the Sea, which won the Locus Award for "Best First Novel," and the novella The Tusks of Extinction. Called "one of the up-and-coming masters of SF short fiction" by Locus, Nayler's stories have been published in Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Vice, and Nightmare, as well as in many "Best Of" anthologies. His stories have won the Clarkesworld Readers' Poll and the Asimov's Readers' Award, and his novelette "Sarcophagus" was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.
Born in Quebec and raised in California, Nayler lived and worked for two decades in Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, and Kosovo. He holds an MA in global diplomacy from the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London. He lives in Washington, DC.