Ray Nayler is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Mountain in the Sea, published in the US by MCDxFSG and in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The Washington Post called Mountain “(a) poignant, mind-expanding debut” and David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, said: “I loved this novel’s brain and heart, its hidden traps, sheer propulsion, ingenious world-building and the purity of its commitment to luminous ideas.” Positively reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly (starred review) and many others, and a best book of the year at Amazon and Slate, The Mountain in the Sea is a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and for the LA Times Book Awards’ Ray Bradbury Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction.

Called “One of the up-and-coming masters of SF short fiction” by Locus, Ray Nayler’s critically acclaimed stories have seen print in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Vice, and Nightmare, as well as in many “Best Of” anthologies, including The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction. His story “Yesterday’s Wolf” won the 2022 Clarkesworld Readers’ poll. In the same year, his story, “Muallim” won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award, his story “Father”, in French translation, won the Bifrost readers’ award, and his novelette “Sarcophagus” was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

For nearly half his life, he has lived and worked outside the United States in the Foreign Service and the Peace Corps, including a stint as Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer at the US consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. He is currently Diplomatic Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy at The George Washington University.