Born in Quebec and raised in California, Ray Nayler has lived and worked abroad for nearly two decades in Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, and Kosovo. A Russian speaker, he has also learned Turkmen, Albanian, Azerbaijani Turkish, and Vietnamese. Ray is a Foreign Service Officer, and previously worked in international educational development, as well as serving in the Peace Corps in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. 

​Ray began publishing speculative fiction in 2015 in the pages of Asimov’s with the short story "Mutability"  Since then, his critically acclaimed stories have seen print in Clarkesworld, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Nightmare, as well as in several Locus Recommended Reading lists and “Best of the Year” anthologies. His story "Winter Timeshare” from the January/February 2017 issue of Asimov's was collected by the late Gardner Dozois in The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction. His story "The Ocean Between the Leaves" from the July/August 2019 issue of Asimov's was selected for The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 5, edited by Neil Clarke. 

Though chiefly known for his speculative fiction, Ray has published in many genres, from mainstream "literary" fiction to comics. He is the author of a detective novel, American Graveyards, published by TTA Press, and of a collection of noir short stories, Sleepwalking. His short stories across numerous genres have appeared in Ellery Queen, Crimewave, Hardboiled, Cemetery Dance, Deathrealm, Queen's Quarterly, and the Berkeley Fiction Review, among other journals. Ray is also a widely published poet, (sometimes publishing under his full name, Raynald Patrice Desmeules Nayler,) with work in the Atlanta Review, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Weave, Juked, Able Muse, Sentence, andmany more.  ​ Ray currently lives in Pristina, Kosovo with his wife Anna, their daughter Lydia, and two rescued cats – one Tajik, one American.

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