Philcon 2025 Guests

Charles Gannon

Principal Speaker

Charles E. Gannon‘s best-selling books have won the Dragon Award, the ALA Choice Award (Outstanding Book), the Compton Crook Award, and have been nominated for four Nebulas. He is best known for the Caine Riordan hard sf series, which include multiple best-sellers, 4 finalists for the Nebula, 2 for the Dragon, and a Compton Crook winner.

“Into the Vortex,” the second volume in Gannon’s epic fantasy series (The Vortex of Worlds) was a finalist for the Dragon Award in 2023. He has collaborated w/ Eric Flint in the NYT/WSJ bestselling Ring of Fire series, the Starfire series, and written solo novels in John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising world. In addition to numerous other fiction credits, he has also written for table-top roleplaying games and as a scriptwriter/producer in NYC.

As a Distinguished Professor of English, Dr. Gannon received 5 Fulbrights, and his Rumors of War & Infernal Machines won the 2006 ALA Choice Award for Outstanding Book. He is a frequent subject matter expert for national media venues (NPR, Discovery, etc.) and for various intelligence and defense agencies. You can learn more about Charles from his website: https://charlesegannon.com/

Sara Felix

Artist Guest

Sara is a Hugo award winning mixed media artist working in inks and resin. She also does a weekly tiara series for Tiara Tuesday and has been creating tiaras since the beginning of the pandemic with over 300 tiaras made since that time. She has designed two Hugo awards for 2013 and 2016 (2016 co-designed with Vincent Villafranca) and then created a joke Hugo for Glasgow 2024 for April fools day. She is also the president of ASFA, The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy artists, and is a con runner herself. She was the artistic director and head of publications for Glasgow in 2024. She has designed numerous logos for fandom, including Glasgow 2024, LA in 2026, Journey Planet, and the Belfast Eastercon in 2025.

You can see Sara’s work and learn more about her at his website: https://www.sarafelix.com/wp/

Adam Stemple

Musical Guest

Adam Stemple is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, “One of the best first novels I have ever read.” Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, “No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple.”

Like most authors, his life experience is broad and odd. He spent twenty years on the road with a variety of bands playing for crowds of between 2 and 20,000 people. He started, ran, and sold a poker training site. He worked in a warehouse. He picked corn. He traded options and demoed houses. He drove pizzas for nine months in 1986, which for twenty-seven years was the longest he’d ever been employed. He drank too much and has now been sober for over fifteen years. He published his first book at the age of sixteen, “The Lullaby Songbook,” which he arranged the music for. His mother is a famous children’s book author. His children are artistic. His wife is a better person than him in nearly all regards.

You can listen to Adam’s music and read some of his writings on his website at https://www.adamstemple.com/