Ray Nayler has lived and worked in Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans for nearly two decades. He is a Foreign Service Officer, and previously worked in international educational development, as well as serving in the Peace Corps in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. A Russian speaker, he has also learned Turkmen, Albanian, Azerbaijani Turkish, and Vietnamese. His speculative fiction debut was in 2015 in the pages of Asimov’s with the short story "Mutability". Since then, his critically acclaimed stories have seen print in Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Nightmare, and several “Best of the Year” anthologies. You can follow him at raynayler.net