Mephala is really Christina Sng, a poet, writer, environmentalist, animal activist, and more recently, a mother, who likes to use her long-time RPG nick out of sheer habit and good fun. Plus it sounds more dark and mysterious.

She is the author of three poetry collections: Dark Dreams (Allegra Press, 2002), Angelflesh (Sam’s Dot Publishing, 2002), and The Darkside of Eden (Naked Snake Press, 2006). Her work has received several Honourable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror as well as a Rhysling Nomination. Although currently on hiatus to focus on paying back her sleep debt, she still dreams in prose.

Since 2000, her poems have sold to numerous North American, British, and Australian publications including Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Aoife’s Kiss, Bare Bone, Black Petals, Blood Rose, Cemetery Poets, ChiZine, Dark Animus, Dreams and Nightmares, Dust Devil, Electric Velocipede, EOTU, The Fifth Di…, Flesh & Blood, Hadrosaur Tales, The Journal, Lunatic Chameleon, The Martian Wave, Mythic Delirium, The Pedestal Magazine, Penumbric, Poe Little Thing, Scared Naked Magazine, Space & Time, Star*Line, Story House, Tales of the Talisman, The Whirligig, Wicked Hollow, and Yellow Bat Review, among many others.

She was Featured Poet in The Edge: Tales of Suspense and Black Petals, and Twilight Tales’ International Author of the Month. In late 2001, she was commissioned by award-winning artist Frank Wu to pen several poems for his work. Some of her collaborators in fiction and poetry include British novelist Mike Philbin, and American poet and journalist Mike Allen.

In 2002, 2003, and 2004, her poems The Marvel of Flight and Crimes of Our Youth, published in Wicked Hollow #1 and #4, The Bone Carver, published in ChiZine, The Art of Weaving, published in Flesh & Blood #14, and Asunder (with Mike Allen), published in Star*Line, received Honourable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Annual Editions, respectively. This year, her poem Medusa in LA, originally published in Tales of the Talisman, was nominated for a 2006 Rhysling Poetry Award (short poem category).

In her free time, she enjoys reading hard science fiction and horror novels, playing with her five precocious cat-children, and occasionally haunting second-hand bookstores around town.

Christina is a nanotechnology advocate, animal welfare activist, and a practitioner of pilates and caloric restriction. She hopes one day in her lifetime, she’ll have nanomachines constantly repairing her body while she heads out to the stars. In the meantime, she will put her money in nanomedical stock, and wait for the science to advance with the dream.