Alien Species Design: A Writer's Guide to Creating Believable Extraterrestrial Life

Traylin Hall is a speculative fiction author and worldbuilding consultant based in Portland, Oregon. With a background in evolutionary biology from the University of Washington, Hall spent a decade in academic research before turning to full-time writing, studying the behavioral ecology of social insects and the evolutionary dynamics of communication systems. That scientific foundation informs everything they write.

Hall's published work includes the xenobiological field guide *Fauna of the Veridian Drift* (2021) and the novel *The Silk Roads of Kefra IV* (2023), which was shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Their short fiction has appeared in *Clarkesworld*, *Lightspeed*, and *Analog*, and has been reprinted in multiple year's-best anthologies. Hall's writing has been praised for its rigorous biological worldbuilding and its ability to make genuinely alien perspectives feel emotionally accessible to human readers.

In addition to writing, Hall works as a consulting worldbuilder for video game studios and tabletop RPG publishers, having contributed to the species and ecosystem designs for the *Stellar Horizon* RPG setting and the *Echoes of the Void* video game series. They are a regular speaker at writing conferences, including Worldcon, Gen Con, and the Odyssey Writing Workshop, where they teach seminars on evolutionary worldbuilding and the craft of creating non-human viewpoints.

Hall lives in Portland with their partner and a collection of terrariums containing isopods, millipedes, and other invertebrates that serve as ongoing inspiration for alien body plans. *Alien Species Design* is their first nonfiction book.