John Scott Dryden is creator of the historical fantasy podcast Tumanbay, which he co-writes and directs. Until recently, John was director of scripted content for Panoply Media, one of the largest podcast producers in the U.S., for whom he executive produced many hit fiction podcasts, including The Message, LifeAfter, Dexter Guff is Smarter Than You and The Walk. He has written and directed many award-winning audio drama series for the BBC, including the thrillers Severed Threads, Pandemic, The Reluctant Spy, A Kidnapping and the Peabody-winning The Day that Lehman Died, a drama about the collapse of Lehman Brothers Bank. John is a director of Goldhawk Productions, a multi-award winning audio production company, and one of the leading producers of audio fiction in the UK.



Lauren Shippen is a writer best known for her work in fiction podcasts. She was the creator and sole writer of the popular audio drama The Bright Sessions, which ran from 2015 to 2018. She went on to executive produce The AM Archives, before founding Atypical Artists, a company dedicated to audio storytelling. She was named one of Forbes’ 2018 30 Under 30 in Media and one of MovieMaker Magazine and Austin Film Festival’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch. Her first novel, The Infinite Noise, will be released through Tor Teen in September 2019. Shippen grew up in New York, where she spent most of her youth reading and going to Panic! at the Disco shows. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she does the same thing.



Mark Henry Phillips is a journalist/producer/sound designer/mixer/composer with over a decade’s worth of experience in podcasts and public radio. He was the editor, sound designer, producer and composer on the first season of Homecoming, the Peabody-nominated scripted podcast. Phillips mixed and wrote the original score for the hit first season of Serial and also mixed (and wrote the theme song) for the podcast StartUp. Before that, he worked for years as a producer and reporter for the NPR media analysis show On the Media and as a freelance reporter and producer for dozens of public radio shows and podcasts, including Radiolab, All Things Considered and Studio 360. Phillips has also had a successful career as a film composer and sound designer, scoring multiple films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He was the sound designer on over a dozen films, including the Academy Award-nominated Cutie and the Boxer.