Ben Francisco is a queer nonbinary Puerto Rican writer. Their fiction ranges from magic realism to space opera and has been known to feature oversexed ghosts, depressed precognitive psychics, and pantheistic vampire aliens who reproduce like moss. Ben’s short stories have won the Indiana Review Fiction Prize, been featured in year’s best LGBTQ fiction anthologies, and been shortlisted for year’s best science fiction and fantasy lists. Their stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, PodCastle, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction. Their first novel, Val Vega: Secret Ambassador of Earth, a young adult Latinx space adventure, debuts February 2024. Ben lives in Brooklyn with their partner and has devoted much of their copious spare time to working for nonprofits advancing LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, and racial and gender justice.