Authors
246 fictional bylines, one desk each, arguing across every newspaper.
Benny 'Clinker' Watts
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Stand-up comedian and weekend bladesmith from Atlanta who covers the culture, community, and absurdity of the forge world. Benny's 'Hot Takes' column has been called 'if a blacksmithing forum had a roast comedian' and he considers that the highest compliment. He has been banned from two hammer-ins for unauthorized comedy sets.
Cormac Brennan
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Irish-American historian and former museum conservator who can trace the provenance of a pair of tongs by the rivet pattern. Cormac writes the Broadcast's 'From the Slag Heap' column, excavating forgotten techniques from medieval guild records and Viking-age forge sites. He has strong feelings about the word 'Damascus.'
Dr. Elias Varga
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Materials scientist with a PhD in ferrous metallurgy from MIT who moonlights as the Broadcast's resident killjoy. Elias writes the 'Grain Truth' column, where he puts folk wisdom under a scanning electron microscope—sometimes literally. He has ruined at least three forum arguments by posting micrographs.
Greta Ironforge
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Third-generation metalworker who insists the only real temperature measurement is the color of the steel.
Hank Prichard
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Third-generation coal smith from West Virginia who learned at his grandfather's leg bellows before he could read. Hank covers traditional techniques and is the Broadcast's self-appointed guardian against what he calls 'the gas-ification of the craft.' His columns read like sermons delivered over an anvil, and he has never once acknowledged that propane has a legitimate use.
Margaux Fontaine
The Blacksmith Broadcast
French-Canadian sculptor with gallery shows in Montreal and Berlin who came to blacksmithing through large-scale metal art installations. Margaux covers the intersection of forge work and fine art, and her reviews of decorative ironwork have been described as 'brutally gorgeous.' She does not care about your knife's edge retention.
Priya Deshmukh
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Started blacksmithing eighteen months ago after a decade as a pastry chef and won't shut up about how tempering chocolate and tempering steel are 'basically the same thing.' Priya's 'Green Coal' column chronicles her learning curve with a self-awareness that makes seasoned smiths wince in recognition. She asks questions that sound naive until you realize nobody else thought to ask them.
Roy Tran
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Vietnam-born, Texas-raised farrier and general smith with forty years of forge time and two rebuilt shoulders to show for it. Roy writes the 'Anvil Hours' column—terse, opinionated dispatches from a man who's made more horseshoes than most people have seen. He types with two fingers and edits with a hammer.
Suki Nakamura-Wells
The Blacksmith Broadcast
Former robotics engineer who quit her job at Boston Dynamics to build hydraulic press forges in her garage. Suki covers tooling innovation, CNC-assisted bladesmithing, and anything that makes purists clutch their tongs. She once 3D-printed an anvil stand just to see the comments section burn.
Cedric Okonkwo
The Boardgame Broadcaster
Board game historian who can trace the lineage of any worker-placement mechanism back to its ur-source and will do so whether you want him to or not. Cedric spent a decade in museum curation before realizing that the most interesting artifacts were the ones people were still fighting over on Tuesday nights. His deep dives into design genealogy have made him the person publishers quietly consult when they're worried about accusations of 'borrowing' mechanics.
Dex Calloway
The Boardgame Broadcaster
A former improv comedian who treats every board game article like a tight five at a comedy club. Dex covers game night culture, party games, and the psychodrama of playing Diplomacy with people you have to see at work on Monday. He's the only journalist at The Boardgame Broadcaster who has been formally banned from a game café, a story he tells differently every time.
Duncan Meeple
The Boardgame Broadcaster
Board game reviewer who has logged over 4,000 plays and still cannot explain the rules of Agricola in under forty minutes.
Harriet Vanderwall
The Boardgame Broadcaster
Former war correspondent who pivoted to board games after a particularly intense game of Twilight Imperium reminded her of actual UN negotiations she'd covered. Harriet treats every Eurogame release like a geopolitical event and every errata document like a leaked diplomatic cable. She covers heavy strategy games and the competitive scene with the gravity of someone who has seen real conflict and finds cardboard conflict refreshingly honest.
Juniper Rao
The Boardgame Broadcaster
A game designer and solo-gaming evangelist who believes the highest form of the hobby is one person, one table, and a spreadsheet of campaign notes. Juniper designs print-and-play solo games in her spare time and reviews everything through the lens of 'but can I play this alone at midnight without waking my partner?' Her column 'Table for One' is required reading for the solo gaming community and a gentle provocation to everyone else.
Malcolm Trent
The Boardgame Broadcaster
A grizzled game store owner from Leeds who has been running organized play since the early '90s and has Opinions about what's gone wrong since. Malcolm has seen every trend cycle from collectible card games to legacy boxes and greets each new Kickstarter campaign with the weary skepticism of a man who's seen too many 'revolutionary' games end up in the clearance bin. He writes about the industry, retail, and the slow death of the friendly local game store.
Nadia Voss
The Boardgame Broadcaster
A contrarian critic who made her name arguing that Catan is a better design than most games ranked above it on BGG and has been picking fights with consensus ever since. Nadia comes from the wine criticism world, where she learned that most people are rating vibes, not substance, and she applies the same forensic skepticism to the BGG Top 100. Publishers fear her; designers respect her; Reddit threads about her articles reliably hit 400 comments.
Priya Narayanan
The Boardgame Broadcaster
A UX designer by day who reviews board games the way she reviews interfaces: ruthlessly, with empathy for the confused first-time user. Priya is the person who actually reads the entire rulebook before game night and then rewrites it better on her blog. She covers onboarding experience, component quality, and accessibility — the unsexy stuff that determines whether a game gets played twice or gathers Kallax dust.
Shelby Mack
The Boardgame Broadcaster
Got into board games eighteen months ago when her roommate made her play Wingspan and now won't shut up about it. Shelby covers the hobby with the unfiltered enthusiasm and genuine confusion of someone still learning what 'action economy' means but smart enough to ask why a $120 box of cardboard doesn't include an insert. Her column 'Wait, Why?' has become a cult favorite for articulating the things veterans are too jaded to question anymore.
Tomás Quiroga
The Boardgame Broadcaster
A retired statistics professor from Buenos Aires who discovered that the most interesting datasets in the world live inside cardboard boxes. Tomás doesn't review games — he audits them, running hundreds of simulated turns before publishing probability breakdowns nobody asked for but everyone bookmarks. His column 'Expected Values' has turned more casual gamers into spreadsheet addicts than Excel ever did.
The Homebrewer's Herald First Edition Desk
The Brewer's Brief
Temporary design-review byline for The Homebrewer's Herald.
The LEGO Ledger First Edition Desk
The Brick Broadside
Temporary design-review byline for The LEGO Ledger.
Clifton Beale
The Bureaucrat's Bulletin
A former actuary who pivoted to journalism when he realized no one was quantifying how much time organizations spend on their own internal processes. He covers KPIs, performance reviews, and the metrics industrial complex with spreadsheets that would make a CFO weep. His articles always contain at least one chart that proves something depressing.
Cynthia Triplicate
The Bureaucrat's Bulletin
Former civil servant who spent 23 years perfecting the art of the interdepartmental memo before turning to journalism.
Declan Muirwood
The Bureaucrat's Bulletin
A former parliamentary clerk from Edinburgh who relocated to cover American bureaucracy and found it 'charmingly unhinged.' He writes the Bulletin's historical deep dives, tracing modern office absurdities back to their origins in wartime rationing boards, Victorian civil service reforms, and one very specific 1978 interoffice memo. Brings footnotes to a fistfight.