Author GoH: Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer is the author of the Terra Ignota series of novels, which are epic science fiction with some fantasy elements featuring a future society dealing with the first war after centuries of peace while trying to establish space travel. She is also a historian who teaches in the History Department at the University of Chicago, and author of Inventing the Renaissance, a nonfiction reimagining of the concept of "The Renaissance".

She's a Renaissance woman herself, as she is also a composer and musical performer, bringing her group Sassafrass to Minicon. She also writes about a variety of other topics, including some essays about manga, and collaborates with former Minicon guest of honor Jo Walton on various projects, including the podcast Ex Urbe Ad Astra. See more at adapalmer.com.

Music GoH: Sassafrass (Ada Palmer, Emily Lewis and Lauren Schiller)

Sassafrass performs Ada Palmer's original a capella polyphonic folk music. Ada's lyrically and harmonically complex songs tell deep and compelling stories drawn from fantasy, science fiction, and mythology. Sassafrass is well-known in the filk and fannish music communities for the Pegasus-Award-winning space exploration anthem "Somebody Will," and for "Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok," a musical retelling of Norse mythology that recounts the history of the Norse Cosmos from its creation to its destruction through a 12-song cycle. Many singers have performed with Sassafrass over the years; at Minicon 60 they will be represented by the trio of Ada Palmer, Lauren Schiller, and Emily Lewis. Learn more and hear their music at sassafrassmusic.com or at Bandcamp.

Artist GoH: Phil and Kaja Foglio

Kaja Foglio is a Seattle-based writer, artist and publisher. She majored in Fine Art at the University of Washington. For her final, she painted a cinder block orange, put it in a public place and refused to be embarrassed. She was active in medieval dance, comedia d'ell arte, and theatre, appearing as Katherina in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

She met Phil Foglio in 1990, introduced by her comic book dealer, who knew she collected Phil's comics, and thus probably wouldn't mind having dinner with him. That all worked out remarkably well. They were married in 1993.

Also in 1993, she began producing art for Wizard of the Coast's Magic: the Gathering. Over the years she would go on to produce art for any number of collectible trading card games, including Shadowfist, Jihad, The Lord of the Rings, Legend of the Burning Sands, and XXXenophile. She founded Studio Foglio, LLC in 1993 as a venue for her Magic: the Gathering art prints but quickly expanded into publishing. In 1998, she was selected to illustrate the World Fantasy Award winning author Barry Hugart's The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox.

She co-writes the comic series Girl Genius with her husband Phil which debuted in 2001 and is the chief graphic designer and web mistress for Studio Foglio and Airship Entertainment. In 2005, she masterminded their stunningly successful and unprecedented transition from traditional periodical to free webcomic. Counter-intuitively, despite the fact that they were now "giving their product away for free", their sales tripled within the first year. Girl Genius Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne & the Chapel of Bones won the very first Hugo award for Best Graphic Story in 2009, and they went on to win in both 2010 (Agatha Heterodyne & the Heirs of the Storm) and 2011 (Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse).

Kaja and Phil continue to live the enlightened ecotopia that is Seattle. She is interested in improbable Japanese harem romance mangas and is in the process of converting their home into an impregnable steampunk fortress. You can read Girl Genius comics online at girlgeniusonline.com.

Phil Foglio grew up in New York. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, earning a BFA in cartooning. He was nominated for Best Fan Artist Hugo Awards in 1976, 1977 and 1978, winning the Award in 1977 and 1978. In 1980, he began the comic strip "What's New with Phil & Dixie" for Dragon. Each month covered a different angle of role-playing games. In 1990 he moved to Seattle, Washington, and was hired by Garfield Games (Wizards of the Coast) to illustrate and design characters for the board game Robo-Rally.

He married Kaja Foglio in 1993, and they founded Studio Foglio in 1995. They produced card art for Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering collector card game.

In 2001 Phil & Kaja released the first issue of Girl Genius as a quarterly comic book series. In 2005, they were the first publisher to take an existing commercial comics property and put it online for free. Within a year of becoming a free webcomic, sales had tripled, and readership had climbed over 100,000. As Phil has put it, "Giving our stuff away for free was the best business decision we ever made."

Foglio was a professional artist Hugo nominee in 2008, and in 2009. He, Kaja, and colorist Cheyenne Wright, won the first Graphic Story Hugo Award for Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones. They won the category again in 2010 for Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, and 2011 for Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse. At this point, they announced that they would take a one-year hiatus from the category. In 2023, he won a Reuban award from the National Cartoonists Society for Best Webcomic: Longform for Girl Genius.

Fan GoH: Geri Sullivan

Minicon 17 was Geri's first science fiction convention. That was all the way back in 1981, and in the decades that followed, she was on 20 different Minicon Committees; served as Minn-StF President and then on the Board for several years; became the post-supporting chair s/u/c/k/e/r/ of the Minneapolis in '73 Worldcon bid; and hosted 189 fannish events at Toad Hall in South Minneapolis during the 20 years she lived there.

In other fanac, Geri started publishing her fanzine, Idea, in 1988, and joined Lee Hoffman's Science-Fiction Five-Yearly as guest editor-publisher for SFFY's last four issues, the final one winning the Best Fanzine Hugo in 2007. Idea went on hiatus for more than two decades, then immediately landed on the 2024 Hugo ballot after it resumed publication in 2023.

Geri brought Minneapolis fannish sensibilities to her hospitality and publications work on several Worldcons, and was the 2019 TAFF delegate to Dublin 2019. She moved to Massachusetts in 2004 and is shocked to realize she's now lived at Toad Woods longer than she lived at Toad Hall. That said, she still considers herself a Minneapolis fan and puts "Wales, MA (Greater Minneapolis Area)" on convention badges whenever she can.