Authors

Taylor Adams-Bass

Taylor Adams-Bass is an illustrator and character designer from Boston, MA. She recently graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a degree in Illustration. Taylor loves creating characters with impactful stories and personalities, and incorporating exaggerated shape language and bold colors into her art. When she isn’t drawing, she is creating intricate collages in her sketchbook and watching Mobile Suit Gundam 00.

Beth Ain

Go to Author Page

Beth Ain is an author of fiction for all ages, including the Starring Jules chapter book series, and two middle grade novels in verse: Izzy Kline Has Butterflies and The Cure for Cold Feet. Her writing has appeared in Scary Mommy, Kveller, and Dame Magazine, and she has taught Creative Writing at Hofstra University. She is currently working on her first novel for adults. She lives in Port Washington, New York with her husband and two children.

Sonia Agüera González

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Sonia Agüera González is an author, illustrator, cell biologist and immunologist. Originally from Madrid, Spain, Sonia obtained their PhD in Immunology from the University of Cambridge, and has worked as a scientist in both England and France. After several years in academic research, they refocused their career on picture books in order to combine their lifelong passions for science and drawing. Sonia lives in the UK with their cat Peluche. While they are not drawing, they are admiring insects and looking for neighboring owls.

TJ Alexander

Go to Author Page

TJ Alexander is an amateur baker and author who writes about queer joy. They are the author of the contemporary romances Chef’s Kiss, Chef’s Choice, Second Chances in New Port Stephen, and Triple Sec and the Regency romance A Gentleman’s Gentleman. Their books have LAMBDA Literary Award Finalists, named Best Books of the Year by TIME and Library Journal, selected as Amazon Editors’ Picks and Indie Next Picks. Originally from South Florida, they received their MA in Writing & Publishing from Emerson College in Boston. They live in New York City with their wife.

Tyler Anbinder

Go to Author Page

Tyler Anbinder is a retired professor of history and former chair of the History Department at George Washington University, and author of three award-winning books of historical nonfiction: Nativism and Slavery, winner of the Avery Craven Prize of the Organization of American Historians; Five Points, winner of the New York City Book Prize of 2001; and City of Dreams, winner of the Mark Lynton Prize for History. His latest book, Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York, was published by Little, Brown and Company in March 2024 . He also served as a consultant to Martin Scorsese for the Academy Award-nominated film Gangs of New York.

Becca Andrews

Go to Author Page

Becca Andrews is the author of No Choice, based on her Mother Jones cover story about the past, present, and future of Roe v. Wade, published by PublicAffairs in October 2022. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism and wrote for newspapers in her home state of Tennessee.

Clar Angkasa

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Clar Angkasa is an author, illustrator, animator, and comic artist with a passion for narrative art. She was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Clar’s graphic novel debut, Stories of the Islands, is forthcoming from Holiday House in fall 2023, with a second graphic novel to follow in spring 2025. When she’s not creating art, Clar is likely obsessing over food, lurking in random cafes, indulging in wine and cheese, or listening to true crime comedy podcasts.

Craig Archibald

Go to Author Page

Craig Archibald is the founder of The Archibald Studio in Los Angeles, where he coaches actors, writers, and directors. His clients include Constance Wu, Katherine Erbe, Beth Behrs, Eric Roberts, and Dan Futterman. He has guided his clients to wins and nominations for numerous awards, including the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Oscars, and Emmys. He is an actor himself and appeared as Christopher Isherwood in the Academy Award-winning film Capote. He is also a playwright, screenwriter, and short film director and producer. His first book, The Actor’s Mindset: Acting as a Craft, Discipline and Business, was published by Applause Books. He has a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he studied with Sanford Meisner.

Tami Oldham Ashcraft

Go to Author Page

Tami Oldham Ashcraft is the author, with Susea McGearhart, of the New York Times-bestselling memoir Adrift: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea (originally published as Red Sky in Mourning) which was adapted into the 2018 film of the same name starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin. It is also an international bestseller and has been published in over 14 foreign territories. Tami continues to be an avid sailor and is a 100-ton licensed captain with over 50,000 offshore miles. She lives in Friday Harbor, Washington.

Alex Aster

Go to Author Page

Alex Aster is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lightlark, which was published by Abrams in August 2022 and sold into over a dozen foreign territories, and its sequel, Nightbane. She is also the author of the award-winning middle grade novels Curse of the Night Witch and Curse of the Forgotten City, inspired by Latinx myths from her childhood. Curse of the Night Witch was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Kirkus and Amazon, was on Good Morning America, and received multiple starred reviews. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied English, and now lives in New York.

Nafiza Azad

Go to Author Page

Nafiza Azad is a young adult author. She is the author of The Candle and the Flame, a 2020 William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist, The Wild Ones, and Road of the Lost. She co-edited the anthology Writing in Color: The Lessons We’ve Learned with Melody Simpson, which was published by S&S in 2023, and writing can be found in the anthologies Come On In, Every Body Shines, and Magic Has No Borders. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Children’s Literature from the University of British Columbia. Born in Fiji, she currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her family.

Taryn Bashford

Go to Author Page

Taryn Bashford is an author of contemporary young adult novels, including The Harper Effect. Before becoming a full-time writer, she received a degree in English from Exeter University, worked in advertising, and was the CEO of a London-based internet company. She grew up in England, and currently lives in Queensland, Australia with her family.

Nora Raleigh Baskin

Go to Author Page

Nora Raleigh Baskin is the award-winning author of books for children and teens, including Anything But Typical (winner of the ALA Schneider Family Book Award), What Every Girl (Except Me) Knows, The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah, The Summer Before Boys, Ruby on the Outside, and Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story. Her work also appeared in the anthology Coming of Age: 13 B’nai Mitzvah Stories. With Gae Polisner, she is the co-author of Seven Clues to Home (Knopf, 2020) and Consider the Octopus (Holt, 2022). She lives with her family in Connecticut.

Jennifer Baumgardner

Go to Author Page

Jennifer Baumgardner is a journalist, filmmaker, lecturer, and author of numerous books about contemporary feminism, including Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism (co-authored with Amy Richards), F’em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls, and Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. With Richards, she is also the cofounder of the speaker’s bureau Soapbox Inc, and was formerly Executive Director at The Feminist Press. She is founder and editor-in-chief of Dottir Press, whose mission is passing on and building upon feminist intellectual and creative legacies. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

Estate of Ludwig Bemelmans

Go to Author Page

Ludwig Bemelmans was a painter, illustrator, and writer for both children and adults best known for the Madeline books, which rank among the most-honored and recognizable children’s book series of all time. Madeline was named a Caldecott Honor Book, and its sequel Madeline’s Rescue, won the Caldecott Medal and was a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year. Bemelmans died in 1962. His grandson continued the Madeline series with three new picture books, Madeline and the Cats of Rome, Madeline at the White House, and Madeline and the Old House in Paris and two books for early readers: Madeline’s Tea Party and Madeline and Her Dog. Recent and forthcoming publications include a new series of board books and picture books from Viking that feature Madeline, and reissues of the beloved adult nonfiction titles Hotel Splendide and To the One I Love Best from Pushkin Press.

Ashley Benham-Yazdani

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Ashley Benham-Yazdani is a picture book author/illustrator and nature lover. She graduated with her MFA from the Illustration Practice Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and received her BFA in Illustration from California College of the Arts. She has taught illustration courses at MICA and at Towson University. She is the author and illustrator of A Green Place to Be, recipient of the 2020 Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text from the SCBWI; and Cosmic Wonder, both from Candlewick Press. She illustrated Of Walden Pond by Lesa Cline-Ransome, which was published by Holiday House in November 2022. When not pushing pigment or pixels around, Ashley can be found reading, knitting, or running around in the great outdoors. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and son.

Ariana Benson

Go to Author Page

Ariana Benson is a southern Black ecopoet. Their debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023) won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, Benson has also received the Furious Flower Poetry Prize and the Graybeal Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in Poetry magazine, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Benson is a proud alumna of Spelman College, where she facilitates creative writing and storytelling workshops for HBCU students. Through her writing, she strives to fashion vignettes of Blackness that speak to its infinite depth and richness.

Laurie Berkner

Go to Author Page

Laurie Berkner is a singer, songwriter, lyricist, and author, recognized as “the queen of children’s music” by her devoted fans. The founder of her own label, Two Tomatoes Records, she has released eleven bestselling, award-winning albums and frequently appears in concert and on television specials. She is the author of five picture books, including We Are The Dinosaurs, Pillowland, and Monster Boogie.

Tamar Bihari

Go to Author Page

Tamar Bihari is an award-winning romance author and screenwriter. Under a pseudonym, she has won the prestigious Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart Award, and was nominated for a RITA award. Several of her screenplays have been optioned by producers. She currently lives with her family in Queens.

Remica Bingham-Risher

Go to Author Page

Remica Bingham-Risher is a poet, interviewer and essayist, a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Her book, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions That Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press in September 2022. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Writer’s Chronicle, Callaloo, Essence and a host of other outlets. She is the author of Conversion, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award; What We Ask of Flesh, shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Starlight & Error, winner of the Diode Editions Book Award and a finalist for the Library of Virginia Book Award. Her next poetry collection, Room Swept Home, was published by Wesleyan University Press in February 2024. She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives, which help faculty integrate writing into the classroom, at Old Dominion University. She resides in Norfolk, Virginia with her husband and children.

Chesa Boudin

Go to Author Page

Chesa Boudin was the 29th District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco. Prior to his election in 2019, he served as a Deputy Public Defender where he tried dozens of cases to verdict and led the office’s efforts on bail reform. His work won the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers 2019 National Champion of Justice Award. A Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Chesa served as a law clerk to two federal judges. Chesa has translated, edited, and authored several books. His scholarly law articles cover a range of topics such as direct democracy, immigration, institution building, the rights of children with incarcerated parents, and prison visitation policies. Chesa lives in San Francisco with his wife and enjoys surfing in his spare time.

K. Tempest Bradford

Go to Author Page

K. Tempest Bradford is a science fiction and fantasy writer, writing instructor, media critic, reviewer, and podcaster. Her debut middle grade novel, Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion was published by FSG Children’s and won the Nebula’s Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies and magazines including Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Sunspot Jungle, In the Shadow of the Towers, and many more. She’s the host of ORIGINality, a podcast about the roots of creative genius, and contributes to several more. Her media criticism and reviews can be found on NPR, io9, and in books about Time Lords. When not writing, she teaches classes on writing inclusive fiction through LitReactor and Writing the Other.com.

Krystle Brantzeg

Go to Author Page

Krystle Brantzeg is an author currently working on her debut young adult novel. She received her B.A. in Literature and Writing, and previously worked as a writer and graphic designer for a wedding magazine. She was a 2019 #WriteMentor mentee, and now writes and homeschools her quartet of kids.

Posie Brien

Go to Author Page

Posie Brien is an award-winning writer and editor working on her debut children’s book. She grew up on a farm in northern Maryland and graduated from Princeton University before beginning a career in food writing. Her 15-year career in food media includes work as an editor, cookbook author, and copywriter for companies like Food52 and King Arthur Baking Company. She co-wrote King Arthur’s IACP-nominated cookbook, The King Arthur Baking School, and is also the author of the award-winning fiction/food blog 600 Acres, which marries original stories and recipes. Posie lives in Virginia with her family, and spends her days writing, baking, and exploring the outdoors with her two young sons.

Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood & Rhonda Joy McLean

Go to Author Page

Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood, and Rhonda Joy McLean are the authors of The Little Black Book of Success: Laws of Leadership for Black Women — which was a national bestseller and NAACP Literary Award nominee — and the companion The Little Black Book of Success Workbook. Elaine Meryl Brown is the former vice president, special markets and Cinemax Group, at HBO. Prior to joining HBO, she was a creative director at Showtime Networks. An Emmy Award–winning writer and the author of the novels Lemon City and Playing by the Rules, she is currently writing her third novel and is based in New Jersey. Marsha Haygood is the President and Founder of StepWise Associates, LLC. She is a Leadership and Personal Development Consultant and was formerly the Executive Vice President of human resources and administration at New Line Cinema and Orion Pictures. She lives in New York and Florida. Rhonda Joy McLean is the President and CEO of RJMLEADS LLC, a leadership consulting and career advancement company. She is the former deputy general counsel of Time Inc. and the former assistant regional director of the Northeast Region of the Federal Trade Commission. She has worked as a corporate litigator in a major New York law firm and taught administrative law at the City University of New York. She lives in New York City.

Peter Bunzl

Go to Author Page

Peter Bunzl is an author, animator, screenwriter, and director who has worked on numerous commercials, music videos, and two BAFTA-winning children’s TV series. He is the author of The Cogheart Adventures, a middle grade fantasy series — comprised of Cogheart, Moonlocket, and Sky Circus — that has been nominated for the Waterstones’ Children’s Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal. He lives with his partner in North London.

Gemma Burgess

Go to Author Page

Gemma Burgess is an award-winning screenwriter and author. As a novelist, she is the author of The Dating Detox, A Girl Like You, and The Brooklyn Girls series of new adult novels, and has been published in over twenty foreign territories. She is the show-runner, co-executive producer, and writer for My Lady Jane, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, which will air on Amazon Prime in 2024. Her screenplay Undergrads was sold to new Regency Studios, and she has sold television pilots and specs to ABC, NBC, ABC Signature, Bravo, Amazon, and Universal. Her half-hour comedy spec Filthy Liar was awarded “Best Comedy” in the WGA Made in NY screenwriting competition, and subsequently optioned by Hat Trick. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Matt Burns

Go to Author Page

Matt Burns is an animation producer and writer of books for kids and teens. His debut young adult novel, Smooth, was published by Candlewick Press. Born in Georgia, he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Sasha Cagen

Go to Author Page

Sasha Cagen is a writer, coach, and founder of the quirkyalone movement, about supporting women and men who prefer to be single rather than settle, with special focus on the empowerment of women to know their worth. Her work has been featured in dozens of media outlets including CNN, NPR, BBC, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us, and is at work on a memoir. She spent five years in Buenos Aires, Argentina teaching, where she created the Tango Adventure, an immersive course that combines dance lessons with life coaching, and is currently based in her native Rhode Island.

Leah Redmond Chang

Go to Author Page

Leah Redmond Chang is a former Associate Professor of French and Director of the French Literature Program at George Washington University, and was most recently a Senior Research Associate at University College London. She is the author of two previous books: Into Print: The Production of Female Authorship in Early Modern France and Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters, winner of the Josephine Roberts Award from the International Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Her latest book, Young Queens, about the intertwined stories of four Renaissance-era queens (Catherine de’ Medici, Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, and Elisabeth de Valois), was published by FSG and Bloomsbury UK, and has been translated into five foreign languages. It was longlisted for the inaugural 2024 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. She lives with her husband and three children in Washington, DC and London.

Julie Chibbaro

Go to Author Page

Julie Chibbaro is the author of three novels for teens: Into the Dangerous World, a Junior Library Guild Selection that was nominated for numerous state awards; Deadly, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and a Bank Street Best Book; and Redemption, winner of the American Book Award. She has taught workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop and The Highlights Foundation, and has written for The Prague Post, The Montreal Gazette, Hudson Valley Magazine, and many other outlets. She lives with her family in Beacon, New York, where she founded Get Lit Beacon, a reading series and literary salon.

Samantha Chong

Go to Author Page

Samantha Chong is a Malaysian fiction writer currently based in New York City. Her debut YA novel, Prodigal Tiger, will be published by Putnam Children’s in fall 2025. Having lived all around the globe, Samantha is interested in exploring what it means to belong, whether that’s tied to places, people, or the myriad of ways that someone can carve out their space in an increasingly shifting world. When she’s not writing, Samantha is out and about exploring, keeping an eye out for the hidden histories waiting to be shared, or in her kitchen, attempting to whip up culinary creations.

J K Chukwu

Go to Author Page

J K Chukwu is a writer and visual artist from the Midwest. Her debut novel, The Unfortunates was published Mariner Books in February 2023, and was a GMA Buzz Pick. She also contributed to Against Enough, a non-fiction collection exploring Nigeria through its writers, released by The Borough Press in the UK, and the forthcoming horror collection Of The Flesh. She holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a BA from the University of Chicago. She was a 2019 Lambda Fellow and her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, and TAYO. She has presented her writing and art at University of Wisconsin-Madison, National Louis University, The University of Manchester, and elsewhere.

Lyndall Clipstone

Go to Author Page

Lyndall Clipstone is the author of the World at the Lake’s Edge duology — comprised of Lakesedge and Forestfall — and Unholy Terrors, a 2023 Indie Next Pick. Her next novel, Tenderly, I am Devoured, will be published simultaneously in the US, UK, and Australia in 2025. A former youth librarian, she has a Bachelors in Creative Writing and a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Management. She has participated as both a mentee and mentor in Author Mentor Match and lives in Adelaide, South Australia with her partner and two sons.

Candice Marley Conner

Go to Author Page

Candice Marley Conner is a children’s book author and Local Liaison for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She is currently working on a middle grade novel. She is the author of the YA novel, The Existence of Bea Pearl, published by Owl Hollow Press, and two picture books: Sassafras and Her Teeny Tiny Tail and Chompsey Chomps Books, both released by MacLaren-Cochrane Publishing. She lives with her family in Alabama.

Desiree Cooper

Go to Author Page

Desiree Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, former attorney, and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who writes extensively about racial and gender equality. Her debut collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, won numerous awards, including 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award. Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, and River Teeth, among other publications. Her essay “We Have Lost Too Many Wigs” was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2019, and her essay “What If I Hadn’t Been There to Catch Them?” ran in the New York Times‘ Modern Love column in 2023. She is the author of the children’s book Nothing Special, and editor of the forthcoming anthology Black Summers: Detroiters Take on the Great Outdoors, both published by Wayne State University Press. After spending her thirty-year career in Detroit, she now lives in the Virginia Beach area, where she cares for her mother and three grandchildren.

Rebecca Crane

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Rebecca Crane is an author, illustrator, and visual development artist. Her next picture book, School Spirits, written by Charlotte Gunnufson, will be published by Atheneum in 2026. Her author-illustrator debut, Barkley, was published by Walker Books Australia in 2020 and she is also the illustrator of My Very Own Space (Nobrow Press), the Daredevil Princess series by Belinda Murrell, and the Pearly and Pig series by Sue Whiting. Rebecca was born in Scotland, grew up in Australia, and spent time in Indonesia before moving back to the UK to study Illustration at Edinburgh University and Character Animation at Central St Martins in London. She’s currently based in the Yorkshire Dales where she spends her time writing and drawing.

Codie Crowley

Go to Author Page

Codie Crowley told a scary story at a childhood slumber party that caused a mass hysteria, and she’s been chasing that high ever since. When she isn’t writing chilling fiction, she’s probably out looking for ghosts in Salem, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, their cat, and a collection of creepy dolls. Her debut YA novel, Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, will be published by Disney-Hyperion in August 2024.

Cody Luke Davis

Go to Author Page

Cody Luke Davis is a writer whose debut psychological thriller, House of a Thousand Lies, was published by Crooked Lane Books in 2022. He previously worked in books-to-film at CAA and The Story Factory. He lives in his native Los Angeles with his wife and two rescue pitbulls.

Barbara Dee

Go to Author Page

Barbara Dee is the author of over a dozen highly acclaimed middle-grade novels, including Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet, Violets are Blue, My Life in the Fish Tank, Maybe He Just Likes You, Everything I Know About You, Star-Crossed, and Halfway Normal. Her latest novel, Unstuck, was published in February 2024, and will be followed by Tear This Down in 2025, and Nothing to See Here in 2026. Her books frequently appear on “best of” lists and have received numerous starred reviews. She has authored viral blog posts about inclusivity in children’s book publishing, and frequently appears at schools, conferences, and in media outlets to discuss her work and the handling of sensitive topics in middle grade fiction. She is a co-founder of the annual Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival, and lives in Westchester County, New York with her family.

Katelyn Detweiler

Go to Author Page

Katelyn Detweiler is a young adult author and literary agent. She received her BA in English Literature from Penn State University and previously worked in the marketing department at Macmillan Children’s Group before joining Jill Grinberg Literary Management as an agent. Her YA novels include the duology Immaculate and Transcendent, The Undoing of Thistle Tate, and The People We Choose. She also writes romantic comedies for adults as Kate Tamberelli. She lives with her husband and children in Brooklyn, New York.

Rachel DeWoskin

Go to Author Page

Rachel DeWoskin is the author of six books of fiction and nonfiction for teens and adults: Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China, Repeat After Me, Big Girl Small (winner of ALA’s Alex Award), Blind, Someday We Will Fly (winner of the National Jewish Book Award and ALA’s Sydney Taylor Book Award), and Banshee. She is also an accomplished poet, and her debut collection Two Menus was released in 2020 from University of Chicago Press. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine of London, Teachers and Writers, and numerous anthologies. She spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera, which became the basis for her memoir. She is on the core fiction faculty at the University of Chicago, and is an affiliated faculty member of the Centers for East Asian Studies and Jewish Studies. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

Alda P. Dobbs

Go to Author Page

Alda P. Dobbs is the author of the historical novels Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna and its follow-up, The Other Side of the River. Petra Luna was nominated for the Texas Bluebonnet Master List Award and received a Pura Belpre Honor Award, and The Other Side of the River won a Northern Lights Book Award for Middle Grade Historical Fiction. Her next book, The Giving Flower, a picture book exploring the story of the Poinsettia, will be published in 2025. Alda was born in a small town in northern Mexico but moved to San Antonio, Texas as a child. She studied physics and worked as an engineer before pursuing her love of storytelling. She’s as passionate about connecting children to their past, their communities, different cultures and nature as she is about writing. Alda lives with her husband and two children outside Houston, Texas.

Alechia Dow

Go to Author Page

Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef, librarian, author of YA sci-fi-fantasies: The Sound of Stars (a Junior Library Guild Selection and Hal Clement ALA notable), The Kindred (Indie Next Kids Jan 2022 Pick), A Song of Salvation; a cozy fantasy, All’s Fair(y) in Love & War, set for publication in 2025; several short anthology pieces, and middle grade stories Just a Pinch of Magic and The Cookie Crumbles which she co-authored with Tracy Badua. When not writing, you can find her having epic dance parties with her daughter, baking, reading, taking teeny adventures, and exploring her local food scene.

Zoé Duhaime

Go to Author Page

Zoé Duhaime is a writer living in Montreal. One day, she will have a bookshop.

Kris Durán

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Kris Durán is an illustrator who grew up by the sea in Venezuela. For many years, Kris worked as an architect until one day she realized she was tired of drawing straight lines for a living. She received an MFA in Illustration at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and has been telling stories with her art ever since. She and her husband live outside of Houston, Texas.

Andrea Eames

Go to Author Page

Andrea Eames is an English poet and novelist now based in Texas after eight years in New Zealand and seventeen years in Zimbabwe. She is the author of A Harvest of Hearts, which will be published by Erewhon Books and Voyager UK in 2025. Her first two novels, published by Penguin Random House UK, were set in Zimbabwe, where she grew up: The Cry of the Go-Away Bird (2011) and The White Shadow (2012), which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2012. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and works part-time as a fairy at the Renaissance Faire. Andrea lives in the country with her husband, baby daughter, and five very ungrateful cats.

L.M. Elliott

Go to Author Page

L.M. Elliott was an award-winning magazine journalist before becoming a New York Times best-selling writer of young adult historical and biographical fiction. She has published over a dozen titles, exploring a variety of topics and eras—WWII, the American Revolution, the Cold War, McCarthyism, and Renaissance Italy. They include Under a War-Torn Sky and A Troubled Peace, Hamilton and Peggy!, Da Vinci’s Tiger, Suspect Red, Storm Dog, Walls, Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves, and Bea and the New Deal Horse (recipient of the 2024 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction). Her next book is Truth, Lies, and the Questions in Between (Algonquin Young Readers, 2024). Her books have received awards from the Bank Street College of Education Best Books, NCSS/CBC Notables, Jefferson Cup Honor Books, Grateful American Awards, and have been finalists on numerous state award lists.

Federico Fabiani

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Federico Fabiani is the illustrator of Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO (FSG, July 2019), I Quit! (FSG, October 2024), and Floor It! (Random House, Fall 2025). Before fully dedicating himself to his lifelong passion of illustration, he studied architecture and worked in the creative business for 15 years. He lives in Rome with his family and senior howling cat.

Eliza Factor

Go to Author Page

Eliza Factor is the author of two novels, Love Maps and The Mercury Fountain, and the memoir Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son. She is the founder of Extreme Kids & Crew, a nonprofit community center that connects families raising children with disabilities through the arts and play. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York and Dublin, New Hampshire.

Kristen Falso-Capaldi

Go to Author Page

Kristen Falso-Capaldi is an award-winning writer with work published in Good Housekeeping, Volume 1 Brooklyn and Joyland. Her short play, Threshold debuted at the 2016 10-minute play festival at the Sandra Feinstein Gamm Theatre. Kristen has taught writing workshops for Frequency Writers in Providence, RI and is an adjunct instructor at the University of Rhode Island. She is also a visual artist and a public school teacher. She lives in northern Rhode Island with her husband and two cats.

Jessica Ferri

Go to Author Page

Jessica Ferri is a freelance writer whose work has been published by The New Yorker’s Page Turner Blog, The Economist, NPR, Yahoo!, Bustle, Time Out New York, The Lineup, The Barnes and Noble Review, and The Daily Beast, where she is a regular contributor. Her books, Silent Cities New York and Silent Cities San Francisco, began as an Instagram travelogue chronicling cemeteries and their unique and largely forgotten stories. She lives with her family in the Bay Area.

Bex Tobin Fine

Go to Author Page

Bex Tobin Fine is a writer of two picture books: You Are Home (Chronicle, Spring 2025) and Floor It! (Random House, Fall 2025). She was a solo violinist for many years, playing with countless orchestras, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Windsor Symphony Orchestra, and McGill Chamber Orchestra. She was also an award-winning on-camera and voice actor, voicing lead roles in numerous children’s animated shows, such as Rolie Polie Olie and Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends. She was a counselor in various settings as well as a high school English, social science, and sciences teacher. She began focusing on writing after getting her master’s degree from the University of Toronto. She now spends her days writing, drinking too much tea, and exploring the world near and far with her husband and daughter.

Kylie Flanagan

Go to Author Page

Kylie Flanagan is a climate justice and resilience strategist, educator, author, and director of a small, place-based foundation. Her first book, Climate Resilience was published by North Atlantic Books in August 2023. She holds a Masters in Sustainability Solutions from Presidio Graduate School and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College, where she studied geography and environmental studies. She lives with her partner in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jonathan Follett

Go to Author Page

Jonathan Follett is a designer, and music producer as well as the co-author, with Matthew Holm, of the middle grade novel Marvin and the Moths. He and Matt are also co-founders of Hot Knife Design, Inc., and have consulted on projects for the New York Public Library, Hearst Publishing, Random House, and Vodafone. He lives in Massachusetts.

Kate Forsyth

Go to Author Page

Kate Forsyth is the bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty books, ranging from picture books to poetry to novels for both children and adults, including the Witches of Eileanan series. She is the only author to win five Aurealis Awards in a single year and was voted one of Australia’s Favorite 25 Novelists. Her books have been published in fourteen countries. She completed her doctorate in fairy tale retellings at the University of Technology in Sydney in 2014. Kate lives in Sydney, Australia.

Corlis C. Fraga

Go to Author Page

Corlis C. Fraga is a writer and illustrator currently working on her debut middle grade novel. She holds a master’s degree in the Rare Book and Digital Humanities from the Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté in Besançon, France, with an eclectic resume spanning everything from woodshop assistant to acting as a bindery operator for a Tibetan sacred text preservation project in California. Goodness knows where you’ll find her next—but don’t be surprised if she’s in the woods with a notebook in hand.

Joanna Franco

Go to Author Page

Joanna Franco is a Brazilian American content creator, polyglot, world traveler, TV personality, entrepreneur, and author currently working on her debut memoir. She has chronicled characters she’s met and experiences she’s lived for over a decade, and she recently created a movement of online journalers called JoClub that promotes writing for mental health and self-discovery. She’s passionate about storytelling’s ability to transform her life and the lives of others, and a trail of pens with no ink can be found wherever she goes.

Katalina Gamarra

Go to Author Page

Katalina Gamarra is the author of Ben and Beatriz, a contemporary reimagining of Much Ado About Nothing that was published in August 2022 by Graydon House. She earned a BA in English from Drew University where she received accolades for both creative writing and academic prowess, as well as an award in Shakespeare Study. Her work has been published on Thought Catalog and Verge of Verse and before becoming an author, she worked in bookselling, literary scouting, manuscript reading, and galley critiquing. She lives in Boston.

Henry Gee

Go to Author Page

Henry Gee is a longtime editor at the science journal Nature and author of several works of nonfiction and fiction. His book A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters, was published in Fall 2021 by Picador in the UK and by St. Martin’s in the US, has sold in over a two dozen foreign territories, and won the Royal Society Science Book Prize; Picador and St. Martin’s will publish his next book, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, in 2025. His previous books include In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, Jacob’s Ladder: The History of the Human Genome, The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution, Across the Bridge: Understanding Vertebrate Origins, and The Science of Middle Earth; his fiction includes The Sigil trilogy, By the Sea, and Hunting Unicorns. His book A Field Guide to Dinosaurs was illustrated by Luis V. Rey. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, England, with his family.

Pavonis Giron

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Pavonis Giron is an author/illustrator with a love of bold colors and a taste for exploration, whether that be in the great outdoors or between city blocks. Their debut picture book, A Rainbow in Brown, was published by Henry Holt in March 2024, to be followed by Angel Draws a Dinosaur in 2025 and a third, currently untitled project, in 2026. Currently based in Milwaukee, Pavonis grew up amongst the sun-bleached rocks of the Mojave Desert which still inspire their work today. In addition to writing and illustrating books for children, Pavonis has also worked in product and game design.

Salinee Goldenberg

Go to Author Page

Salinee Goldenberg is a speculative fiction writer and multimedia artist who lives in Washington DC, and is drawn to outsider perspectives. Her debut fantasy novel, The Last Phi Hunter, will be published by Angry Robot in April 2024. A biracial, bisexual, diaspora writer, Sal often explores themes of identity, obsession and alienation in her work. Previously, she worked at Bethesda Softworks creating narrative trailers for games such as Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Dishonored, and now produces videos for Minecraft. When not writing, she likes to paint, listen to records, and play in punk bands.

Lori Goldstein

Go to Author Page

Lori Goldstein is an author of novels for readers of all ages. Her contemporary YA novels Screen Queens and Sources Say were published by Razorbill in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Her debut fantasy Becoming Jinn was published in 2015, followed by a sequel, Circle of Jinn in 2016. As Lori Anne Goldstein, she is the author of Love, Theodosia, a debut historical romance published by Arcade in November 2021. Before becoming a full-time writer, she received her bachelor’s degree in journalism and worked as an editor and graphic designer. She lives in Boston.

Beverly Gooden

Go to Author Page

Beverly Gooden is a social activist and speaker known for her groundbreaking hashtag movement, #WhyIStayed and the author of Surviving: Why We Stay and How We Leave Abusive Relationships, which won the 2023 Nautilus Book Award in the Memoir and Personal Journey category. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the U.S. Office on Women’s Health, and TIME Magazine. She is the recipient of Investigation Discovery and Glamour magazine’s Inspire A Difference “Everyday Hero” Award and was featured in a Toyota commercial discussing her work with survivors of intimate partner violence. Beverly holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in social justice. She lives in Houston, TX with her many cactus plants.

Alison Goodman

Go to Author Page

Alison Goodman is the acclaimed author of numerous books of young adult fantasy, including Singing the Dogstar Blues, the New York Times bestselling duology Eon and Eona, and the multi-award winning Lady Helen trilogy, comprising The Dark Days Club, The Dark Days Pact, and The Dark Days Deceit. Her debut novel for adults, The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, was be published in the US by Berkley in May 2023, with a sequel to follow in 2024. She lives with her husband in Australia, and recently completed her PhD at the University of Queensland.

Hayden Goodman

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Hayden Goodman is an African-American painter, illustrator, and character artist born and raised in the wilderness of Western Massachusetts. She holds a degree in Illustration from The School of Visual Arts and previously worked in animation. Her debut picture book, The Green Piano by Grammy Award-winner Roberta Flack and Tonya Bolden, was published in January 2023 by Anne Schwartz Books. Her forthcoming illustration projects include The Heart Never Forgets by Ana Ot (Atheneum, 2024), The Night Before Christmas (Holt, 2025), a visual reimagining of Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, Imagine New Suns by Gwendolyn Wallace (S&S, 2026), a picture book biography of Octavia Butler, and Fangs, Feathers, and Folklore by B. Sharise Moore, a middle grade field guide to mythological African beasts. Hayden’s editorial illustrations have been published in The New Yorker and the New York Times. She works primarily in gouache, painting the witches, goblins and other mysterious creatures from the folklore of her childhood.

b.t. gottfred

Go to Author Page

b.t. gottfred is a screenwriter, producer, director, playwright, and young adult novelist. His series of interconnected contemporary novels include Forever for a Year, The Nerdy and the Dirty (chosen by BookRiot as one of 50 Must-Read YA Novels of the past decade), and The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy. As a playwright, his work is critically-acclaimed and has had runs in Los Angeles, Chicago and off-Broadway in New York. He has written, directed, and produced numerous digital series and feature films. With Corey Moss, he is the co-founder of the production company Bold Soul Studios. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.

Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton

Go to Author Page

Andy Griffiths is among Australia’s most popular and bestselling children’s authors. With illustrator Terry Denton, he has published more than thirty bestselling books since 1997, including the acclaimed and New York Times bestselling Treehouse series. Their books have sold over ten million copies globally, have received dozens of children’s choice awards, and have been published in over 35 foreign territories.

Taylor Grothe

Go to Author Page

Taylor Grothe (none/they/she) is a queer, Autistic writer of YA and adult horror. Their debut YA novel, Hollow, will be published by Peachtree Teen in Fall 2025. Shorts of theirs can be found in Coffin Bell Journal, Shortwave Magazine, This is Tense by Bag of Bones Press, and Haven Speculative. They acted as the 2022–2023 graduate assistant managing editor of Brevity and they are an MFA student at Fairfield University. In their free time, Taylor slowly kills their family’s many houseplants and lives to serve their black cat, Hekla, in the most haunted state in America.

Charlotte Gunnufson

Go to Author Page

Charlotte Gunnufson is the author of several picture books, including Prince and Pirate (which received a starred review from Kirkus), Halloween Hustle, and Dream Submarine (Candlewick, 2024). Her forthcoming picture books include Hard Hat Hank and the Sky-High Solution (Planet Possible, 2025) and School Spirits (Atheneum, 2026). Her poems have appeared in the Cricket and Highlights family of magazines and she is a four-time recipient of Highlights Pewter Plate award. Charlotte holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s of Arts degree in Teaching.

Elnora Gunter

Go to Author Page

Elnora Gunter is an author of contemporary, contemporary romance, contemporary fantasy, horror, and speculative fiction mainly in the young adult space but also writes select genres in adult and short stories. No matter the age group or label, her stories will always include love, family dynamics, the weight of decision-making and a thread of hope. Her short stories “Food for the Soul” was published in FIYAH Literary Magazine (Issue 23: Food and Culture) and “Healer of Herself” will be in Midnight and Indigo Magazine’s forthcoming speculative and horror fiction issue (October 2023). She received a BA in English from LSU (Geaux Tigers!). When she’s not spinning tales, Elnora spends her days breaking down prose and literature to teenagers, binge-watching entirely too much TV, and cooking with her husband. She lives in southern Louisiana but spent her early childhood in New England and Appalachia.

Phillip Gwynne

Go to Author Page

Phillip Gwynne is an Australian children’s book author. Before becoming a writer, he was a professional footballer, after which he worked as a teacher in Thailand and a programmer in Belgium. His books include the six-book Debt series: Catch the Zolt, Turn off the Lights, Bring Back Cerberus, Fetch the Treasure Hunter, Yamashita’s Gold, and Take a Life. He lives in Australia.

Margaret Hathaway & Karl Schatz

Go to Author Page

Margaret Hathaway is the author of numerous nonfiction titles, including The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese, Living with Goats: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Backyard Herd, Food Lovers’ Guide to Maine: Best Local Specialties, Markets, Recipes, Restaurants & Events (Food Lovers Series), Portland, Maine Chef’s Table: Extraordinary Recipes From Casco Bay, and The New Portland, Maine, Chef’s Table: Extraordinary Recipes from the Coast of Maine. Her husband, Karl Schatz, is a photographer and creative director of Slow Food Portland. They live with their three children on a farm in Southern Maine, where they raise dairy goats, tend to a large garden and a small orchard, make cheese, and teach workshops on homesteading.

Sarah L. Hawthorn

Go to Author Page

Sarah L. Hawthorn is a Canadian horror and speculative fiction writer. Her debut novel, The Drowned Coast, will be published by Sourcebooks. She works in aging and health research and holds a bachelor’s in public relations from Mount Saint Vincent University. Their short fiction has been featured in The Arcanist and the Queer Blades anthology by From the Farther Trees Press. She loves to write and read anything spooky, especially gothic and eco-horror books. When she’s not writing, she enjoys watercolour painting, video games, and swimming. Sarah recently moved back to her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, a maritime locale full of spooky stories she’s been devouring since elementary school.

Fran Hawthorne

Go to Author Page

Fran Hawthorne is an award-winning author and journalist who has covered health care, politics, finance, and business news for over twenty-five years. She was previously an editor and writer at Fortune, Business Week, and the Bergen Record, and has been a regular contributor to The New York Times and Newsday. She writes book reviews for The National and the New York Journal of Books. She is the author of eight books of nonfiction, including Ethical Chic: The Inside Story of the Companies We Think We Love; Pension Dumping: The Reasons, the Wreckage, the Stakes for Wall Street, and Inside the FDA: The Business and Politics Behind the Drugs We Take and the Food We Eat. Her debut novel, The Heirs, was published in 2018.

Christopher Healy

Go to Author Page

Christopher Healy is a critically-acclaimed author of books for young readers, including the Hero’s Guide trilogy and the Perilous Journey of Danger and Mayhem trilogy. His debut picture book, This is Not That Kind of Book was published by Random House. His latest novel, the middle grade mystery No One Leaves the Castle, was published by Walden Pond Press in August 2023. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children, where he is currently working on his next middle grade novel.

Willow Heath

Go to Author Page

Willow Heath is a visual artist, illustrator, storyteller, creative crafter, and art instructor. Her debut picture book, Lasting Love (written by Caroline Wright) was published in 2019. In addition to her own illustrating and writing, she teaches illustration and painting in schools. Willow lives in Seattle with her husband and son.

Devorah Heitner

Go to Author Page

Devorah Heitner is an author, speaker, and an expert on young people’s relationship with digital media and technology. Her latest book on the subject, Growing Up in Public (TarcherPerigee, 2023) was an instant USA Today bestseller. She is also the author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World (Routledge, 2016); the second edition of the book was released in 2023. Dr. Heitner’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine and Education Week. She has a Ph.D. in Media/Technology & Society from Northwestern University and has taught at DePaul and Northwestern.

Marc Herman

Go to Author Page

Marc Herman is the author of Searching for El Dorado, a description of his travels with Amazon gold miners. A longtime foreign correspondent, he is also the author of The Shores of Tripoli, a story about the Libyan revolt based on his reporting for The Atlantic, and The Wizard and the Volcano, a dispatch from a natural disaster in Indonesia. His current projects are One in a Million, a reconstruction of a high-stakes immigration case, and The Barcelona Apartment, which summarizes blunders he made while rebuilding an historic home in Barcelona, where he currently lives with his son.

Belinda Hermawan

Go to Author Page

Belinda Hermawan is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose short fiction has been published by Cosmonauts Avenue, Pigeon Pages, Flock, Split Lip Magazine, Westerly, Going Down Swinging and elsewhere. She is an alumnus of UWA Law School, the Centre for Stories’ Indian Ocean Mentoring Project, Winter Tangerine’s “Sing That Love Dovesong” workshop, and Parsons School of Design Summer School. Belinda has served on the Australian Short Story Festival committee and was formerly at Writing WA. She lives in Australia.

Josuee Hernandez

Go to Author Page

Josuee Hernandez is a writer based in Portland, Oregon, currently working on his debut novel. He holds a MA from Portland State University and a BA from the University of Oregon, both in English literature. He serves as Vice President of The People’s Colloquium, a community nonprofit of writers and thinkers who organize free education in philosophy and the arts in the Pacific Northwest. He lives with his partner.

Marc Hetherington

Go to Author Page

Marc Hetherington is the Raymond Dawson Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of three books: Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide and Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, co-authored with Jonathan Weiler, and Why Washington Won’t Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis, co-authored with Thomas J. Rudolph, which won the Alexander George Award from the International Society of Political Psychology. He and his work have been widely cited in mainstream media, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Guardian. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Lauren Ho

Go to Author Page

Lauren Ho is a reformed legal counsel who writes ownvoices stories. She is the author of Last Tang Standing and Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic, both from Putnam. Bite Me, Royce Taslim, her debut YA novel, was sold to Disney-Hyperion at auction and was published in May 2024. Hailing from Malaysia, she lived in the United Kingdom, France and Luxembourg before moving with her family to Singapore, where she is ostensibly working on her next book.

Sara Jane Ho

Go to Author Page

Sara Jane Ho is a global etiquette leader for modern women in China and around the world. A Hong Kong native and graduate of Harvard Business School, Sara is the founder of Institute Sarita, China’s first etiquette school — named one of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. She was named to Forbes‘ Women to Watch in Asia 2013 and BBC’s 100 Women 2015. She is also the author of the bestselling Chinese-language book Finishing Touch: Good Manners for the Debutante and the host of The Sara Show on Beijing Television, Tencent Video, and YouTube. She is the star of Netflix’s Mind Your Manners and the author of a forthcoming book of the same name, to be published by Hachette Go in April 2024.

Ioana Hobai

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Ioana Hobai grew up in Bucharest, Romania, where she first learned to paint with her uncle who was a professional artist. She attended the Nicolae Tonitza art school in Bucharest and has a B.Arch / M.Arch from the Ion Mincu Institute of Architecture and Urbanism. Her author-illustrator debut, Lena’s Slippers (2019), inspired by her childhood in communist Romania, was selected as a Bank Street’s Best Children’s Books of the Year. She also wrote and illustrated A Whale of a Mistake (2020), and illustrated Before You Sleep (2018), written by Annie Cronin Romano. Ioana lives in Massachusetts with her daughters.

Amanda Hollander

Go to Author Page

Amanda Hollander is a fiction writer and opera librettist based in Brooklyn. Her short story “A Feast of Butterflies” from the Mar/Apr issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was included in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2021. Another short story, “A Strange and Muensterous Desire” published by Diabolical Plots, made the 2022 Locus Recommended Reading List. She also has published fiction in Augur Magazine and Daily Science Fiction. A librettist fellow with the American Opera Project, she wrote the opera Quake, set by composer Kay Rhie, which will premiere through UCLA’s Department of Music in Spring 2023. In addition to her creative work, she holds a doctorate in Victorian and children’s literature from UCLA and has published several academic articles on fin-de-siècle children’s books.

Jennifer L. Holm

Go to Author Page

Jennifer L. Holm is the award-winning and bestselling author of multiple novels for young readers. Her debut novel, Our Only May Amelia, was a Newbery Honor book, and she has received two subsequent Newbery Honors for Penny from Heaven and Turtle in Paradise. Her novel Full of Beans, a sequel to Turtle in Paradise, won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. She is also the author of the Ginny Davis series, the Boston Jane series, and the New York Times bestselling The Fourteenth Goldfish and its sequel, The Third Mushroom, which have sold in eighteen foreign territories. Her latest novel, The Lion of Mars, was published by Random House Children’s in January 2021. A new graphic novel adaptation of Turtle in Paradise, illustrated by Savanna Ganucheau, was published by Random House Graphic in June 2021 and was an instant IndieBound bestseller. With her brother Matthew, she is the co-creator of multiple award-winning and bestselling graphic novels, including the Babymouse series, the Squish series, and the Sunny series. She lives in California.

Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm

Go to Author Page

Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm are the brother-and-sister team behind over fifty best-selling and award-winning graphic novels and books for young readers, including the Eisner Award-winning Babymouse graphic novel series, which has over three million copies in print and has since branched out into picture books and middle-grade novels. They are the creators of the Squish series, the New York Times bestselling Sunny series, the Evil Princess vs. the Brave Knight series, the My First Comics board book series, and co-edited and contributed to the Comics Squad anthology series. New and forthcoming graphic novel publications include two volumes of The BIG Adventures of Babymouse and the fifth and sixth installments of the Sunny series.

Matthew Holm

Go to Author Page

Matthew Holm is an author, illustrator, graphic designer, and freelance writer. With his sister Jennifer, he is co-creator of multiple award-winning and New York Times bestselling graphic novels, including the Babymouse series, the Squish series, and the Sunny series. With Jonathan Follett, he is the co-author and illustrator of the middle grade novel Marvin and the Moths. He lives with his wife in upstate New York.

Jenny L. Howe

Go to Author Page

Jenny L. Howe is a professor of writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, where she teaches courses that focus on the representation of bodies and identities in children’s media. Her academic writing has been published in Young Adult Literature in the Composition Classroom: Essays on Practical Applications (MacFarland Press, 2018). She is the author of three romantic comedies for adults, published by St. Martin’s Press: The Make-Up Test (September 2022), On the Plus Side (December 2023), and How to Get a Life in Ten Dates (December 2024). Her debut young adult novel, Love at Full Tilt, will be published by Delacorte in 2025. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and the “excellent ears club” — i.e. their two rescue dogs, Tucker and Dale.

Simmone Howell

Go to Author Page

Simmone Howell is the author of four novels of young adult fiction, including Notes from the Teenage Underground, Everything Beautiful, Girl Defective, and Take Three Girls, co-written with Fiona Wood and Cath Crowley. She is a PhD candidate at LaTrobe University, where her research focuses on shared culture, dream-lives, life-writing, and the teenage experience. She has also taught young adult fiction and writing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and La Trobe University, and frequently facilitates creative writing workshops for schools and community groups. She lives in Melbourne.

Tonya Hurley

Go to Author Page

Tonya Hurley is an author, screenwriter, director, and producer, and the author of the Blessed series for teens, and the young adult novel, ghostgirl, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and has spawned two internationally bestselling sequels, been published in 22 foreign languages around the world, and optioned for film by Matthew Vaughan. Her independent films have been selected for film festivals around the world and broadcast on ABC, PBS, and IFC. Prior to her writing career, she was a music publicist for artists including Prince, George Michael, Morrissey, The Cure, and Depeche Mode. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Julie Iromuanya

Go to Author Page

Julie Iromuanya is the author of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, 2015), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Debut Fiction. Her next novel, A Season of Light, will be published by Algonquin Books in February 2025. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Callaloo: A Journal of African American Arts and Letters; Afropolitan Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020); and the Georgia Review. She is a 2020 George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellow, and she was the inaugural Herbert W. Martin Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton. Iromuanya earned her PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago and affiliate faculty of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.

S. Jae-Jones

Go to Author Page

S. Jae-Jones is an artist and the New York Times best-selling author of Wintersong and Shadowsong, which have been published in ten foreign territories. Her latest novel, Guardians of Dawn: Zhara, was selected by Barnes & Noble as its YA Book Club pick and was published by Wednesday Books in August 2023; the next installment in the series, Ami, will be published in 2024. She was previously an editor at St. Martin’s Press in New York, and was also a contributor to the Pub(lishing) Crawl blog and co-host of their podcast. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in North Carolina.

Sarah Marie Jette

Go to Author Page

Sarah Marie Jette is a middle-grade author. She was named Latinx in Publishing’s 2022-2023 Work in Progress Fellow and is the author of What the Wind Can Tell You. Sarah Marie spends her days with the most amazing people ever: her third-grade students! In 2022, Sarah Marie was a semifinalist for the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year. When she’s not teaching or writing, Sarah Marie crafts with her three children and snuggles with her cats.

Catherine Jinks

Go to Author Page

Catherine Jinks is an author of over a dozen books of children’s fiction and winner of numerous awards, including the Children’s Book Council of Australia “Book of the Year Award,” the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and the Aurealis Award. Her books include the acclaimed Evil Genius trilogy, the Bogler trilogy, Babylonne, The Reformed Vampire Support Group, Living Hell, The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group, The Paradise Trap, and Saving Thanehaven. She lives in New South Wales with her family.

Alaya Dawn Johnson

Go to Author Page

Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of fiction for adults and young readers. Her debut literary adult novel, Trouble the Saints, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her latest young adult novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, was published by Scholastic and Harper UK in 2023 and won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Young Readers. Her previous titles include The Summer Prince, which was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and Love is the Drug, which won the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. She has also contributed to numerous young adult anthologies, including Zombies vs Unicorns, Three Sides of a Heart, Feral Youth, and Come On In. Her novelette, “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” won the Nebula Award and appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, guest edited by Joe Hill. Her first collection of short fiction, Reconstruction, was published by Small Beer Press. She is one of five authors who collaborated with singer Janelle Monáe on her New York Times bestselling collection of short fiction, The Memory Librarian. She lives in Mexico, where she attained her Masters in Mesoamerican Studies.

Briana Johnson

Go to Author Page

Briana Johnson is a young adult writer whose debut novel, If I Could Go Back, will be published by Peachtree Teen in 2025. She has a degree in Computer Network and Cybersecurity and was a mentee in the 2019 Pitch Wars class. She currently lives in Chicago with her family.

Kathleen B. Jones

Go to Author Page

Kathleen B. Jones was born and educated in New York, receiving a B.A. in Political Science from Brooklyn College, and a Ph.D. from the political science program at CUNY’s Graduate School and Center. After teaching women’s studies for two decades at San Diego State University, she resigned to focus on writing, recently earning an M.F.A. in fiction from Fairfield University. Her debut novel, Cities of Women was published by Keylight Books in 2023. Her scholarly writing includes six books published with academic presses—three monographs and three edited anthologies of critical essays. Diving for Pearls: A Thinking Journey with Hannah Arendt won the 2015 Barbara “Penny” Kanner Book Award from the Western Association of Women Historians. Kathleen’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Fiction International, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, The Briar Cliff Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Melanie Katzman

Go to Author Page

Melanie Katzman is an author, psychologist, consultant, and sought-after expert in executive development, group dynamics, and leadership diversity. Connect First, her debut business book, was an instant national bestseller and a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller. She founded Katzman Consulting in 1999 and has worked with businesses in 31 countries. She is also a partner of the global social enterprise Leaders’ Quest, serving a community of 12,000 members. She has held faculty positions in psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical Center and the University of London, was a senior fellow at Wharton Business School’s Center for Leadership and Change Management, and has been a visiting professor at numerous universities across the globe. She is co-creator and co-host of Women @ Work on SiriusXM, and has been featured in the Financial Times, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and on ABC, CBS, and Lifetime. She lives in New York City.

Amy S. Kaufman

Go to Author Page

Amy S. Kaufman is a medieval studies scholar whose work has appeared in a number of academic journals, as well as in The Washington Post and on The Public Medievalist. She is co-author of The Devil’s Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past, published by the University of Toronto Press in June 2020. The Crow’s Song, a Robin Hood retelling based on the original medieval tales, is her debut novel and will be published by Penguin. She lives in Vancouver with her spouse, a very spoiled cat, and way too many plants for her apartment.

Lee Kelly

Go to Author Page

Lee Kelly is the author of The Antiquity Affair and The Starlets, co-written with Jennifer Thorne, published by Harper Muse, and With Regrets, published by Crooked Lane Books. She is also the author of two novels for young adults, City of Savages and A Criminal Magic. Before becoming a writer, she was an entertainment lawyer who practiced law in Los Angeles and New York. She lives with her husband and children in Pennsylvania.

Mikki Kendall

Go to Author Page

Mikki Kendall is a writer, speaker, and diversity consultant whose work tackles race, intersectionality, policing, gender, and many other topics. Her New York Times and IndieBound bestselling essay collection Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot was published in February 2020 by Viking Books, and was named one of TIME‘s Must-Read Books of 2020, and has sold in six foreign territories. Her writing can be found in various outlets including Time.com, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Ebony, Essence, Salon, xoJane, Bustle, and Islamic Monthly, and was anthologized in Wonder Women of History from DC Comics. She has been interviewed by a number of media outlets including the BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, Showtime, and appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Good Morning America. Known as @Karnythia on Twitter, she has over 150,000 followers and created a number of viral hashtags, including #solidarityisforwhitewomen, #HistoricPOC, and #fasttailedgirls. She is also the author of the graphic novel Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women’s Fight for Their Rights. She lives with her family in Chicago.

Sakika Kikuchi

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Sakika Kikuchi is an illustrator and graphic designer. She completed her MA in children’s book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art in the UK, and lives outside of Tokyo in her native Japan. She is the illustrator of Show Us Where You Live, Humpback, written by Beryl Young and published by Greystone Kids in 2021. Her latest picture book Milo Walking, written by James Howe, was published by Abrams in November 2023.

Gayle Kirshenbaum

Go to Author Page

Gayle Kirshenbaum is a writer and community organizer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Daily News, The Huffington Post, Ms., George, The New York Times, and Tikkun. She’s written about motherhood, parenting and race, labor organizing, reproductive rights, and Jewish identity. She is a co-founder of Hand in Hand, a national organization that supports employers of domestic workers to be fair employers. As an editor at Ms., she was a co-recipient of the Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus. She attended the University of Michigan, where she was a recipient of the Hopwood Award for essay writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is working on a novel about women’s friendships and the construction of racial and political identity set in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, shortly after the lead poisoning of the water supply in nearby Flint.

Ellen Klages

Go to Author Page

Ellen Klages is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of fiction for children and adults. Her first novel for young readers, The Green Glass Sea, won several awards, including the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and was followed by White Sands, Red Menace and Out of Left Field, winner of the New York Historical Society Children’s History Book Prize. She is also an acclaimed author of short fiction: most recently, her novella Passing Strange won the World and British Fantasy Awards for Best Novella, and her story “Amicae Aeternum” was adapted into an award-winning short film. Her work has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards and has been translated into eight languages. She lives in San Francisco.

Ambelin Kwaymullina

Go to Author Page

Ambelin Kwaymullina is an Aboriginal author and illustrator who belongs to the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She works across a wide range of forms including poetry, art, and both fiction and non-fiction. Ambelin is a multi-award winning writer whose work has been published across the world including in Europe, the United States, China and South Korea. Her latest YA novel, Liar’s Test, was published by Knopf in May 2024.

Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina

Go to Author Page

Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina are a brother-sister team of Aboriginal writers who come from the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The Things She’s Seen, their first joint young adult novel (published as Catching Teller Crow in Australia), received rave reviews and won multiple awards, including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Young Adult Fiction and the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel. They have previously collaborated on a number of short novels and picture books. Ambelin is also the author of The Tribe series of novels, including The Foretelling of Georgie Spider, The Disappearance of Ember Crow, and The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf.

Margo Lanagan

Go to Author Page

Margo Lanagan is an acclaimed and award-winning author of fiction for young readers. She is a two-time winner of the Michael L. Printz Honor, for Black Juice, a collection of short fiction, and her novel Tender Morsels. Her other short fiction collections include Red Spikes, White Time, Yellowcake, Phantom Limbs, and Stray Bats. She has won and received dozens of nominations for prestigious awards including the Aurealis, the World Fantasy Award, and a number of Australian Premier Literary Awards. With Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti, she is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling Zeroes trilogy. Her latest novel is Spindle Sisters, forthcoming from Knopf and Allen & Unwin. She lives in Sydney.

Justine Larbalestier

Go to Author Page

Justine Larbalestier is the award-winning author of eight critically acclaimed novels for young adults. Her most recent novel, My Sister Rosa, was an Edgar Award Finalist for Best Young Adult Novel. Her other novels include the Magic or Madness trilogy (winner of the Andre Norton Award), How to Ditch Your Fairy, Liar, and Razorhurst. With Holly Black, she edited the anthology Zombies vs. Unicorns and has contributed essays and short fiction to a number of collections. She was previously an academic and edited a scholarly collection of feminist science fiction and published The Battle of The Sexes in Science Fiction. She and her husband, author Scott Westerfeld, split their time between Sydney, Australia and New York City.

Kirby Larson

Go to Author Page

Kirby Larson is the award-winning and bestselling author of numerous books for young readers. Her debut novel Hattie Big Sky won the Newbery Honor and was a New York Times bestseller. With Mary Nethery, she is the author of the New York Times bestselling picture book Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine & a Miracle (with Major Brian Dennis) and Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival. She has gone on to write the acclaimed Dogs of World War II series — Duke, Dash (winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction), Liberty, and Code Word Courage; and the Audacity Jones series, which received an Edgar nomination. She also has written picture books and novels for American Girl and the Dear America series. Her recent titles include Gut Reaction, her debut contemporary middle grade novel, co-written with her daughter Quinn Wyatt, and Shermy & Shake, the Not-So-New-Kid, the second book in her Shermy & Shake chapter book series. She lives in Kenmore, Washington with her husband.

Oren Lavie

Go to Author Page

Oren Lavie is a musician, director, playwright, and author of children’s books. He has released a number of critically acclaimed albums, including The Opposite Side of the Sea. The music video for “Her Morning Elegance” was nominated for a Grammy, and received over 30 million views on YouTube and his song “A Dance ‘round The Memory Tree” was featured on the soundtrack for Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. His debut picture book The Bear Who Wasn’t There: And the Fabulous Forest has been published in a number of foreign languages, and his second picture book is forthcoming. He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Speed Levitch

Go to Author Page

Timothy “Speed” Levitch is an actor, tour guide, speaker, author, and voice actor, based in Kansas City and New York. A licensed New York City tour guide since 1992, he has worked with Apple and Gray Line Tours as a tour bus guide, and quickly attracted a cult following for his distinctive, fast-talking tours — The New York Times called him “the Walt Whitman of the double decker bus.” He was later the subject of The Cruise, an award-winning documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Bennett Miller, which was screened at a number of international film festivals. He has frequently collaborated with Academy Award-nominated director Richard Linklater, who directed him in Up to Speed, a comedic docu-series currently available to stream on Hulu, the cult animated film Waking Life, and the smash hit comedy School of Rock. Recently, he appeared as himself on HBO’s High Maintenance. He has performed his monologue “Midtown Loop” at sold-out venues in New York City, and continues to give public and private tours.

Britney S. Lewis

Go to Author Page

Britney S. Lewis is an author of two young adult novels: The Undead Truth of Us (2022) and The Dark Place (2023), both published by Disney Books. Her next novel, Blood Moon, a paranormal romance, will be published by Page Street in April 2025. She has a B.A. in corporate communications with an emphasis in business and art. She strongly supports We Need Diverse Books, and she’s an avid follower of #DVpit and #BVM. When Britney isn’t daydreaming about new stories, she can be found binge-watching TV shows with her husband and her pup or practicing West Coast Swing. She lives in Kansas City.

Monica Liaw

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Monica Liaw is an illustrator, designer, and can tell stories in five languages. She has a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, and received her Masters in Illustration at the Elisava School of Design and Engineering in Barcelona. Monica was born in Taiwan, and currently moves between Taiwan, Japan and parts of Europe. She has most recently completed illustrations for a series of fairytales published in China by Guangxi Normal University Press, and has books forthcoming from Motie and Post Wave Publishing. Monica’s inspirations come from all over: from traditional Japanese music, dancers, to old Italian uncles and dogs she meets on her travels. When not making art, she can be found playing piano, singing, or dancing. She uses mixed media to create her illustrations, combining watercolor, pastel, collage and digital tools.

Rosina Lippi

Go to Author Page

Rosina Lippi is a former academic and the author of over a dozen books of fiction and scholarly work. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Homestead, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the UK’s prestigious Orange Prize. She also wrote two later novels, Tied to the Tracks and The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square, as Rosina Lippi. As Sara Donati, she is the author of the Wilderness series of novels, which has over a million copies in print. The series comprises six novels: Into the Wilderness, Dawn on a Distant Shore, Lake in the Clouds, Fire Along the Sky, Queen of Swords, and The Endless Forest. She wrote two additional books, The Gilded Hour and Where the Light Enters, that are set in the same historical fiction universe. Her latest novel, The Sweet Blue Distance, is a historical epic set in the American West and was released in April 2024. She lives on Puget Sound with her family.

Bess Lovejoy

Go to Author Page

Bess Lovejoy is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The Believer, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Boston Globe, The Public Domain Review, Atlas Obscura, and many other outlets. She is the author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, which was named an Amazon Best Book of 2013 and has been translated into three foreign languages. She was an editor for Schott’s Almanac, the Smithsonian website, and Mental Floss. She is based in Seattle.

Leil Lowndes

Go to Author Page

Leil Lowndes is an author and internationally recognized communications expert who specializes in subconscious interactions. She has conducted hundreds of seminars in the US and around the world for major corporations, associations, and the general public, and frequently appears as a guest expert on national television shows and major news networks. She has authored ten bestselling books on communications — most recently, How to Talk to Anyone at Work: 72 Little Tricks for Big Success Communicating on the Job — and is published in over 26 foreign languages. She lives in New York City.

Andy Malpica

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Andy Malpica is an illustrator from Mexico City who loves to imagine worlds for a living and tell the wonderful stories that happen in them. She recently completed her MA in Children’s Book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art, where she learned to play with different types of media and discovered new ways to draw. Nature is an important part of Andy’s practice, and it is a constant resource where she draws inspiration for her illustrations. Her heart has always been interested in sustainability and animals and their behavior, particularly their curiosity, their light hearted approach to life and their bonds with human beings. You can usually find her seeking new adventures with her partner and three dogs: Nina, Babas and Nugget.

Melina Marchetta

Go to Author Page

Melina Marchetta is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of books for adults and young readers. Her young adult novel, On the Jellicoe Road, won the Michael L. Printz Medal, and she has been nominated for dozens of Australian literary prizes, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and was the recipient of the NSW Premier’s Special Award in 2021. She adapted her debut novel, Looking for Alibrandi, into a feature film, and won the Australian Film Institute Award and an Independent Film Award for Best Screenplay. Her other novels for young readers include Saving Francesca, The Piper’s Son (longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award), and The Lumatere Chronicles trilogy. Her novels for adults include The Place on Dalhousie and the literary crime novel Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil. Her most recent works are a series of seven children’s chapter books and a picture book about a mischievous young girl named Zola, published by Penguin Australia. Her work has been translated into 18 foreign languages and published in 20 countries. She lives in Sydney.

Johnny Marciano

Go to Author Page

Johnny Marciano is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator. He is the co-author of the Klawde series of illustrated chapter books with Emily Chenoweth. With Sophie Blackall, he is the co-creator of the Witches of Benevento series. He has published several standalone middle-grade novels, including The Nine Lives of Alexander Baddenfield and The No-Good Nine, and three books of nonfiction for adults: Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words, Toponymity: An Atlas of Words, and Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet. His picture book How Did Humans Go Extinct?, illustrated by Paul Hoppe, was published by Black Sheep/Akashic. His new and forthcoming projects include The 66th Rebirth of Frankie Caridi, the first installment in a new middle grade series, which was released in July 2024. As John Bemelmans Marciano, he has also authored and illustrated five Madeline books, continuing the series created by his grandfather, Ludwig Bemelmans. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

Zara Marielle

Go to Author Page

Zara Marielle is the product of a Northern Californian hippy town and a rustic village high in the French Alps. A former ESL teacher, she loves to travel and has also lived in Canada, Venezuela, England, and Scotland. Zara earned a master’s in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. Her debut novel, Cafe Euphoria, will be published by Union Square & Co in Spring 2026. When she isn’t working on contemporary fantasy novels, she spends her time inventing much sillier, spontaneous content in improv shows and workshops.

John Marsden

Go to Author Page

John Marsden is the author of more than 40 books for young readers, including Tomorrow When the War Began, the first in a series with seven books and three tie-in novels, which was adapted into a feature film in 2010. His novels have sold over five million copies worldwide and he has been honored with every major award in Australia for children’s fiction. His passion for education led him to found two schools in Australia, Candleback and Alice Miller, which place emphasis on the creative arts, enroll almost 400 students and inspired his latest work, The Art of Growing Up, a nonfiction book about education and parenting.

Rachel M. Marsh

Go to Author Page

Rachel M. Marsh earned her MFA in Creative Writing for Children from Simmons University in Boston. Her debut novel, Rougarou Magic, will be published by Greenwillow in September 2024. She now lives in New Orleans where she and her husband eat the world’s best food and renovate their almost-hundred-year-old house.

Sarah Glenn Marsh

Go to Author Page

Sarah Glenn Marsh is an author of young adult novels and picture books. Her YA titles include Fear the Drowning Deep, Dread the Harvest Moon, the Reign of the Fallen series, and The Girls Are Never Gone. Her picture book titles include Selfie Sebastian, Ninita’s Big World: The True Story of a Deaf Pygmy Marmoset, The Bug Girl: Maria Merian’s Scientific Vision, Ellie’s Crayon Adventure and The Mystery of the Love List. She has also authored the middle grade title Your Birthstone Book, published by Running Press Kids. Her forthcoming books include a new picture book, Bigfoot’s Big Heart, and several books in the “How to Spot” series from Running Press Kids, including How to Spot a Fairy, How to Spot a Magical Woodland Creature, and How to Spot a Mermaid. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

John Marshall

Go to Author Page

John Marshall is a nine-time Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and director, and wrote and hosted numerous weekly TV shows in Maine for over a decade. He created the “Sunset Selfies” photo series, which received significant media attention and was picked up by The Guardian. He is the author of the memoir Wide-Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed One Family’s Lives Forever.

Elise Matich

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Elise Matich is an educator, artist, writer, and mother. She has a Masters in Special Education, and a passion for creating materials that help children of all abilities cultivate their capacity for knowledge. She has been teaching through picture books for over twelve years, as a special educator and a homeschooling parent, and she’s now creating her own books: a series of illustrated biographies that explore the lives of figures whose significance has been, in some way, overlooked or overshadowed. Her debut title in this series, Sew Sister: The Untold Story of Jean Wright and NASA’s Seamstresses, was published in October 2023 by Tilbury House. She lives in Virginia with her family.

Kate Maupin

Go to Author Page

Kate Maupin is an award-winning author, educator, foster child advocate, and reformed Super Mom. She is a genre-hopping author, with work originating in academic nonfiction, but excited to make her fiction debut. She is a national speaker on education and parenting topics, and is a recent retiree of the executive board of the Connecticut Association for the Gifted. Her work with populations of high needs children, as well as her own journey in special needs parenting, brought her to the realization that all parents can benefit from an antibody to “super parenting”. Kate currently lives in the wilds of Connecticut with her husband, two sons, and a truly outrageous number of pets.

Patricia McCormick

Go to Author Page

Patricia McCormick is a two-time National Book Award finalist, is the author of several critically acclaimed novels and picture books, including Cut, Never Fall Down, The Plot to Kill Hitler, Sgt. Reckless, the True Story of the Little Horse Who Became a Hero and Sold, which was adapted into a feature film in 2016. She is also the co-author of I am Malala. Her next picture book, The Bicycle, was published by Balzer + Bray in May 2024. Her books have been named to the New York Times Notable Books list, Publishers Weekly Best Books list, NPR’s Best Books list and iTunes Best Books lists. She has received the New York Foundation on the Arts fellowship, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowship, and a MacDowell Center fellowship. She attended Rosemont College, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has an MFA from the New School. She lives in New York.

Kara McDowell

Go to Author Page

Kara McDowell is the author of novels for young adults, including One Way or Another and This Might Get Awkward, published by Scholastic; and The Prince & the Apocalypse and Heir, Apparently, published by Wednesday Books. She received her BA in English Literature and worked as a freelance writer and blogger before publishing her debut novel, Just for Clicks. She lives with her husband and three sons in Arizona.

Chris McGowan

Go to Author Page

Chris McGowan is an author, educator, and paleontologist who received his PhD from London University. He is the former curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and professor of zoology at the University of Toronto and has written over fifteen books of nonfiction for children and adults, including Dinosaur Discovery: Everything You Need to Be a Paleontologist and The Dragon Seekers: How An Extraordinary Circle Of Fossilists Discovered The Dinosaurs And Paved The Way For Darwin. Born in England, he has lived and worked in Canada for over fifty years.

Lauren McLaughlin

Go to Author Page

Lauren McLaughlin is a screenwriter and the author of eight books for children and young adults. She began her film career producing music videos and commercials, and went on to produce several feature films for Lionsgate. Her produced screenplays include Prisoners of Love, Specimen, and Hypercube. She is the author of five novels for young adults: Cycler, (Re)cycler, Scored, The Free, and Send Pics, and has written three picture books: Wonderful You and two books in the Mitzi Tulane: Preschool Detective series. Her debut collection of short fiction, The Perfect Man and Others, was released in 2021. She lives with her family in London.

Felicity McLean

Go to Author Page

Felicity McLean is a ghostwriter, journalist, and author. She has ghostwritten six books, including the award-winning Body Lengths with Olympian Leisel Jones, and has also authored a picture book. As a journalist, she has conducted interviews with dozens of authors, including James Patterson, Lee Child, and Nicholas Sparks. Her debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone was released to critical acclaim and has been published in six countries. She lives in Australia.

Mary McMyne

Go to Author Page

Mary McMyne is the author of The Book of Gothel (2022) and A Rose by Any Other Name (2024), published by Redhook and Orbit UK. She has published short stories, poems, and essays in venues such as Gulf Coast, Redivider, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Southern Humanities Review. She is the recipient of the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for a Novel-in-Progress, a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and a National Endowment for the Arts Parent Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, among other honors. Her debut poetry chapbook, Wolf Skin (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), won the Elgin Chapbook Award. A graduate of the New York University MFA Program, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Lake Superior State University.

Aline Mello

Go to Author Page

Aline Mello is a writer, editor, and Undocupoet fellow. Her debut poetry collection, More Salt Than Diamond, was published by Andrews McMeel. Her work has been published in Catapult, The Georgia Review, The New Republic, Wildness Journal, and Saint Katherine Review, among others. In addition to writing, Aline teaches cross-stitching and embroidery to adults and tries to make her own clothes and earrings at home. She is originally from Brazil and now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her dog and books.

Chris Mercogliano

Go to Author Page

Chris Mercogliano is the author of Making It Up As We Go Along, the Story of the Albany Free School (Heinemann, 1998), Teaching the Restless, One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed (Beacon Press, 2004), How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining Schools That Work (Oxford Village Press, 2006), In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness (Beacon Press, 2007), and A School Must Have a Heart (Oxford Village Press, 2014). His essays, commentaries, and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, and journals, as well as in seven anthologies; and he has also been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio’s “Ideas,” and many other nationally syndicated radio shows. The father of two wonderful daughters, he lives with his wife Betsy on a one-acre farm in downtown Albany, New York.

Marissa Meyer

Go to Author Page

Marissa Meyer is the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Lunar Chronicles series, Heartless, the Renegades trilogy, Instant Karma, the Gilded duology, and With a Little Luck. She also edited the anthology Serendipity: Ten Romantic Tropes, Transformed. Her debut middle grade novel, Let It Glow, co-written with Joanne Levy, will be published in October 2024. She created and hosts The Happy Writer, a podcast where she interviews authors on how to overcome various obstacles and bring more joy to the writing process, and will release a corresponding non-fiction/self-help book of the same name in 2025. Her books have sold over five million copies worldwide and have been published in 37 foreign territories. She lives in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband and their two daughters.

Brenda Miller

Go to Author Page

Brenda Miller is the author of five essay collections, the most recent of which are A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form, and The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop published by the University of Michigan Press.. She has co-authored three editions of Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining and Publishing Creative Nonfiction with Suzanne Paola. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review for 17 years and her own poetry has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Sweet, Bellevue Literary Review, and Psaltery and Lyre. She is the recipient of six Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Washington state, where she is a Professor of English at Western Washington University, and associate faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop

Robb Mommaerts

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Robb Mommaerts is a cartoonist and illustrator who always hoped that his hobby of doodling bizarre creatures in school notebooks would eventually turn into a career. From his basement dungeon, he’s been hopping between the realms of children’s book illustration, comic books, game art, and character design. His latest project is The Monstrous Adventures of Mummy Man & Waffles, written by Steve Behling and forthcoming from HarperCollins in August 2024. He also illustrated the KLAWDE: Evil Alien Warlord Cat series, written by Johnny Marciano and Emily Chenoweth. Before that he has completed eight picture book titles and provided artwork for several top-selling table-top game projects. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, two kids and a dog.

Kiyash Monsef

Go to Author Page

Kiyash Monsef is a writer, creative director, and Emmy-nominated producer who has worked in a number of media, including television, short films, comic books, and video games. His debut novel, Once There Was was an instant New York Times bestseller, was selected as Target’s Book of the Year for Young Readers, and was named a Finalist for the 2024 William C. Morris YA Debut Award. He is also a Webby-nominated designer of innovative conversational and voice interface experiences, and has worked for Google, Motorola, Nokia, and The New York Public Library, among many other clients. His short fiction has been featured in Byliner, New Millennium Writings, and Penumbra’s New Fiction. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Angela Montoya

Go to Author Page

Angela Montoya is the author of three young adult romantasy novels: Sinner’s Isle, A Cruel Thirst, and Carnival Fantástico, all published by Joy Revolution Books. She was named a Publishers Weekly Fall 2023 Flying Start, and has participated as a Round 5 Author-Mentor Match mentee and was selected to be a mentee in Pitch Wars 2020. She lives in Northern California with her family.

Princess Moon

Go to Author Page

Princess Moon is a second-generation Cambodian-American award-winning poet, illustrator, teaching artist, and community organizer based in Boston, MA. She was the first woman SlamMaster to the Mill City Slam and formerly served as the Programs Director of the youth organization FreeVerse! Princess Moon has graced the Finals stages of the 2011 Brave New Voices, as well as the 2012 and 2013 Louder Than a Bomb Massachusetts, and has featured at the Boston Poetry Slam and the House Slam, amongst other venues. In 2016, she published her first full-length collection of poetry, The Genocide’s Love Baby Learns to Sing with Bootstrap Press. In 2018, Princess Moon founded Let Me Write You a Poem, an online platform geared towards community healing through storytelling. In 2020, she launched Tiny Trophy Shop, a one-woman design studio specializing in making early childhood education fun and accessible through art and play. She lives in Boston, MA with her partner and son.

Jaclyn Moriarty

Go to Author Page

Jaclyn Moriarty is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, and has been translated into over ten foreign languages. She is known for her young adult and middle grade novels, including the Ashbury-Brookfield series, the prize-winning Colours of Madeleine series, and the Kingdom & Empires series. Her standalone novels include I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes and The Spell Book of Listen Taylor. Her debut adult novel, Gravity is the Thing, was published by HarperCollins to great acclaim. Her latest middle grade novels, The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst, The Astonishing Chronicles of Oscar from Elsewhere, and The Secret of Lillian Velvet are published in the US by Levine Querido. She has received a number of Premier’s Literary Awards, the Aurealis Award, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award. She lives in Sydney with her son.

Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Go to Author Page

Catherine Gilbert Murdock is a former academic and the author of eight novels for children and young adults. Her latest novel for young readers, Da Vinci’s Cat, was published in May 2021 by Greenwillow/HarperCollins. Her novel The Book of Boy was a Newbery Honor book and has sold into ten foreign territories. She is also the author of the Dairy Queen series, comprised of three young adult novels and one for middle grade readers, and two historical fantasy novels: Princess Ben and Wisdom’s Kiss. She lives in Philadelphia.

Hiền Nguyễn

Go to Author Page

Hiền Nguyễn is a speculative fiction writer who hails from the Midwest. By day she is a social science researcher and by night she writes about Vietnamese ghosts, monsters, and mythology. Her debut novel Twin Tides, will be published by Delacorte in Fall 2025. She is interested in the uplifting and haunting forms of human connection, and how SFF writing can lay those bare. An indoor cat disguised as a human, Hiền enjoys going bird watching with her significant other, binging K-pop variety shows, and absorbing hot pot broth like a sponge.

Garth Nix

Go to Author Page

Garth Nix is the internationally bestselling author of over 30 books for readers of all ages, including the New York Times bestselling Old Kingdom series, the Keys to the Kingdom series, the Seventh Tower series, Frogkisser!, Angel Mage, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, and Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer. His next middle grade novel, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord, will be published by Scholastic in Fall 2024. His next adult novel, the science fiction epic Massif, will be published by Harper Voyager in 2025, and will be followed by a third installment in the Booksellers series, The Even-Handed Booksellers of Edinburgh, in 2026. With Sean Williams, he is the co-author of the Troubletwisters series, the Have Sword, Will Travel series, and Spirit Animals: Blood Ties. More than six million copies of his books have been sold around the world and his work has been translated into 40 languages. He has received countless awards and nominations in the US and Australia for his novels and short fiction. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two children.

Sabina Nordqvist

Go to Author Page

Sabina Nordqvist is a disabled author currently residing in Pennsylvania. Her debut contemporary romance novel, It’s All in Your Head, will be published by Grand Central in 2026. With three nationalities and a professional background in intercultural exchange, she has lived in eight countries and speaks six languages. Sabina also offers sensitivity reads for disability and chronic illness representation in fiction.

Deborah Noyes

Go to Author Page

Deborah Noyes is an editor, photographer, and author of numerous books for children and adults. She has edited several well-received collections of short fiction, including The Restless Dead, Gothic!, and Sideshow, and is the author of four novels: Angel and Apostle and Captivity for adults, and The Ghosts of Kerfol and Plague in the Mirror for young adults. She also writes nonfiction for young readers, including Ten Days a Madwoman: The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original “Girl” Reporter, Nellie Bly (shortlisted for the New York Historical Society Children’s History Prize), The Magician and the Spirits: Harry Houdini and the Curious Pastime of Communicating with the Dead, Tooth & Claw: The Dinosaur Wars, A Hopeful Heart: Louisa May Alcott Before Little Women, and Lady Icarus: Balloonomania and the Brief, Bold Life of Sophie Blanchard. She is also the author the short fiction collection We Are All His Creatures: Tales of P.T. Barnum, The Greatest Showman. Her forthcoming books include An Outbreak of Witchcraft, a graphic novel about the Salem Witch trials illustrated by M. Duffy, releasing from LB Ink in 2024, and a new nonfiction picture book to be published by Neal Porter Books. She lives in Maine.

Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez

Go to Author Page

Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez is a writer covering ambition, money and power in her award-winning newsletter “Too Ambitious”, with bylines in Bloomberg, CNBC, Glamour UK, Newsweek, USA Today and Business Insider. Her latest book, The New Rules for Ambition, will be published by PublicAffairs in 2026. She is also a producer and the host of Real Simple magazine’s ‘Money Confidential’ podcast (a 2023 Webby Award Winner, a 2022 Eddie & Ozzie award-winner, a 2022 Signal Award winner, and one of Spotify’s “Best New Shows of 2021”). A go-to millennial expert, Stefanie has appeared on ABC World News, Yahoo Finance, CBSN, Fox & Friends, Fox Business, Bloomberg, The Doctors and local news stations around the US. A graduate of New York University, Stefanie lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Linda Ólafsdóttir

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Linda Ólafsdóttir is an award-winning illustrator, painter and author working in publishing and fine art. She is the author-illustrator of the picture books I Dare! I Can! I Will!: The Day the Icelandic Women Walked Out and Inspired the World about Long Friday, where women across Iceland walked out of their jobs and marched together for women’s rights, and Play, both published by Cameron Kids/Abrams. She has also illustrated a number of books with other authors, including Sam McBratney’s Mindi and the Goose No One Else Could See (Walker Books/Candlewick Press). Linda has been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards twice, her work has been featured in the Bologna Book Fair’s Illustrator Exhibition, and she has won numerous awards for her illustration and design work. Linda draws, paints and writes from her backyard studio in Reykjavík, Iceland, where she lives with her husband and two kids.

Johan Olander

Go to Author Page

Johan Olander is an author and illustrator of numerous books for young readers. He wrote and illustrated A Field Guide to Monsters, A Field Guide to Aliens, and My Robots. He is also the illustrator of The Need to Feed: Recipes for Developing a Healthy Obsession for Deeply Satisfying Foods by underground music legend Lydia Lunch; Parade?, a limited edition children’s book by French artist Philippe Parreno; and An Eyeball in My Garden, a collection of humorous poetry selected and edited by Laura Wynkoop and Jennifer Cole Judd. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

Alyssa Palombo

Go to Author Page

Alyssa Palombo is an author of historical fiction. Her novels include The Violinist of Venice, The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence, The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel, and The Borgia Confessions. Her latest book, The Assassin of Venice, was published by Crooked Lane in June 2024. An avid reader, she is also a classically trained musician with a love of heavy metal and rock music. She graduated summa cum laude from Canisius College in 2011. When not traveling as much as she can, she lives and writes in Buffalo, NY.

Suzanne Paola

Go to Author Page

Suzanne Paola is an award-winning poet, memoirist, and author of nonfiction. As Susanne Paola Antonetta, she is the author of Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World, and Make Me a Mother: A Memoir. With Brenda Miller, she is the author of Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction. Among the awards her work has won are a New York Times Notable Book distinction, an American Book Award, a Library Journal Best Science Book of the Year Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Her essays and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Orion, and Seneca Review. Her next project is The Devil’s Castle, a cultural history of a once well-regarded German psychiatric institute that would later house a Nazi extermination program. She lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband and son.

Sajni Patel

Go to Author Page

Sajni Patel is an author of fiction for readers of all ages. She is the author of the romance novels The Trouble With Hating You and First Love, Take Two, published by Forever, and Isha, Unscripted and The Design of Us, published by Berkley. Her contemporary YA novels include The Knockout, My Sister’s Big Fat Indian Wedding, and Sleepless in Dubai; A Drop of Venom, her debut YA fantasy novel, was published by Rick Riordan Presents in 2024. Her short fiction appeared in the contemporary anthology Together Apart. Prior to her writing career, she worked in aerospace research with the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

George Pendle

Go to Author Page

George Pendle is a journalist and the author of three books: Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President, and Death: A Life. Strange Angel was adapted into a television series on CBS All Access with Ridley Scott executive producing, and has aired its second season. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and he previously wrote for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

Nadi Reed Perez

Go to Author Page

Nadi Reed Perez is an author and writer for The Call of the Flame, a fantasy fiction podcast. They live near Denver with a growing menagerie of cats and a few probable ghosts. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera (Titan Books, 2024) is their debut book and was an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. You can find them on Instagram and (for better or worse) on Tumblr @nadireedperez.

Tiffany Pham

Go to Author Page

Tiffany Pham is the founder & CEO of Mogul, one of the largest online platforms for women worldwide, reaching 196 countries and over 30,000 cities. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, and previously worked for Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, HBO, and CBS before developing the first iteration of Mogul in her bedroom. Tiffany was named one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30” in Media, and is the recipient of dozens of awards and commendations for her work. Her debut book, You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, and Do It Now was an instant national bestseller, and was followed up by a companion for younger readers: Girl Mogul: Dream. Do It. Change the World. Her latest workshop Building Trust to Build a Network is exclusively available on the Audible for Business platform. She was a judge on the TLC show Girl Starter, and co-host of Positive Pushback, and has produced films that have screened in festivals around the world. A prolific speaker, she makes hundreds of appearances a year, including at the United Nations, Microsoft, Hearst, Viacom, The New York Times, AOL, and the Wharton Business School. She lives in New York City.

Charles Piller

Go to Author Page

Charles Piller is an author and journalist who writes investigative stories for Science. He previously worked as an investigative journalist for STAT, the Los Angeles Times, and The Sacramento Bee, and has reported on public health, biological warfare, infectious disease outbreaks, and other topics from the United States, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central America. Charles has won numerous journalism honors, including the 2016 AAAS/Kavli Science Journalism Award, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Communications Award, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award, and the First Amendment Coalition Free Speech & Open Government Award, and the 2023 and 2024 National Institute of Health Care Management Trade Journalism Award. He has authored two investigative books about science and has testified before the U.S. Senate about his investigations of government compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, and workplace electronic surveillance. He was a founding board member of the Center for Public Integrity. His latest book, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s, will be published by One Signal/Simon & Schuster in January 2025.

Roque Planas

Go to Author Page

Roque Planas is a reporter for HuffPost, covering immigration and voting rights issues. He holds two master’s degrees, in Latin American History and Journalism. He has covered immigration for HuffPost for the past nine years, publishing hundreds of articles and making appearances on CBC, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, CTV News, and the BBC. He is based in Austin, Texas.

Shivaun Plozza

Go to Author Page

Shivaun Plozza is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Her YA novels include Frankie, a CBCA Notable Book and winner of the Davitt Awards and a commendation from the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award; Tin Heart, recipient of two starred reviews, and The Worst Perfect Moment, forthcoming from Holiday House in May 2024. She is also the author of several middle-grade novels, including The Boy, the Wolf, and the Stars and A Reluctant Witch’s Guide to Magic, published by Clarion Books, and Meet Me at the Moon Tree, published by University of Queensland Press. She is a frequent contributor to anthologies, and her short work has also appeared in Above Water, Vivid, and The Victorian Writer. She lives in Melbourne.

Aden Polydoros

Go to Author Page

Aden Polydoros is an award-winning author of dark fantasy and gothic horror novels. In addition to receiving starred reviews from School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Bookpage, and Booklist, his novel, The City Beautiful, won the Sydney Taylor Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the 2022 World Fantasy Award. He is also the author of Bone Weaver and Wrath Becomes Her, which was a Sydney Taylor Honor Book. His short fiction appeared in The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror. His debut middle grade fantasy, Rings of Solomon, was published in 2023 and will be followed by a sequel, Nightmares in Paradise in 2024.

Alissa Quart

Go to Author Page

Alissa Quart is a journalist, poet, and the author of four books of nonfiction: Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child, Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels, and Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. She is the Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a journalism non-profit devoted to reporting on inequality. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and The Guardian, among many other publications. She is also the author of two published collections of poetry, Monetized and Thoughts and Prayers, and her poems have been published by Granta, The London Review of Books, and The Nation. She executive produced the Emmy award-winning documentary “Jackson,” which recounts how the radical pro-life movement pressures and recruits low-income pregnant women and keeps them mired in poverty. Her fifth nonfiction book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, addresses the myth of American self-reliance, and was published by Ecco in March 2023. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn, New York.

Amy Quichiz

Go to Author Page

Amy Quichiz is a writer and founder of Veggie Mijas, a nonprofit organization that fights for folks of color and food disparity. Her recognition has appeared in numerous of platforms including The New York Times, Vogue India, VegNews, and BUST. Her writing has been published in Bold Latina, Bustle SELF Magazine in a piece titled “10 Vegans of Color on What Being Vegan Means to Them,” and she was featured in Lindsay Gardner’s 2021 book, Why We Cook. Currently the Organizing Coordinator at PPFA, she previously attended Syracuse University for her bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology and is now getting her Masters Degree at the American University in the Ethics, Peace, and Human Rights Program. Amy currently lives in Washington DC, with her life-long partner and her dog, Princess.

James Raney

Go to Author Page

James Raney is the author of numerous books for young readers, including the Jim Morgan series, a two-time Foreword Reviews Books of the Year Finalist for Juvenile Fiction, and winner of the Writer’s Digest Book Award for YA/Middle Grade Fiction. He lives in California, where he frequently tours schools and bookstores to talk about his work.

Joan Reardon

Go to Author Page

Joan Reardon is an author and attorney from Youngstown, Ohio. Her love for Midwestern history and folklore inspired her debut novel The Grimsbane Family Witch Hunters, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in August 2024. Her second middle grade novel, Dad Rock Dragon Quest, will be released in Summer 2025. Joan holds a BA in history from The Ohio State University and earned her law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. When she’s not writing, Joan enjoys going on adventures with her wonderful husband, Ben, and spending time with her incredibly large, incredibly loving family.

Amy Richards

Go to Author Page

Amy Richards is an author, speaker, producer and third-wave feminist leader. She is the author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (co-authored with Jennifer Baumgarder), Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism (co-authored with Jennifer Baumgardner) and Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself. An advisor for the media brand MAKERS, she is also the author of We Are Makers: Real Women and Girls Shaping Our World and its companion Make Your Mark: A Journal for Capturing Big Dreams for young readers. With Jennifer Baumgardner, she is co-founder of Soapbox Inc: Speakers Who Speak Out, a feminist speaker’s agency representing a diverse list of activists and thought leaders, including Gloria Steinem, Jill Soloway, and Kathy Najimy. Recently, she produced the Emmy-nominated series WOMAN for Viceland and curated a series of talks to accompany Annie Leibowitz’s traveling exhibit, WOMEN, as well as acted as consulting producer for HBO’s Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words and PBS’s MAKERS: Women Making America. Her media appearances include The O’Reilly Factor, Oprah, Talk of the Nation, New York One, and CNN. She co-founded the Third Wave Foundation, and has run Ask Amy, Feminist.com’s online advice column since 1995. She lives in New York City.

Tohby Riddle

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Nominated for the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen Medal, Tohby Riddle is the multi-award-winning creator of numerous picture books and illustrated books, which have been widely recognised in Australia and overseas for their quality and originality. This includes one of the world’s greatest living writers Haruki Murakami translating Tohby’s book My Uncle’s Donkey into Japanese after discovering it in a Melbourne bookshop in 2018. Other books include The Great Escape from City Zoo, The Singing Hat, Nobody Owns the Moon and most recently The Astronaut’s Cat. Tohby also illustrated the Word Spy series with Ursula Dubosarsky (known as The Word Snoop in the US).

Kelly Robinson

Go to Author Page

Kelly Robinson is a two-time Bram Stoker Award finalist and the recipient of Writer of the Year in the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. She has particular interests in horror, film, and excavating forgotten aspects of history, which she has written about in outlets like The Guardian, Smithsonian, Mental Floss, Scary Monsters, and Atlas Obscura. Her eclectic obsessions have led to lecturing at the Library of Congress on the topic of gorillas in film, being interviewed in a BBC documentary about snails, and writing sea shanties for McSweeney’s.

Shauna Robinson

Go to Author Page

Shauna Robinson is the author of Must Love Books, The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks, and The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster. Her novels have been selected for the Indie Next List and recognized as Best Books of the Month by Amazon. She received her Bachelor’s degree in English from UC Berkeley and lives in Virginia with her husband and their sleepy greyhound.

Kelsey Rodkey

Go to Author Page

Kelsey Rodkey is the author of the young adult novels Last Chance Books, A Disaster in Three Acts, and Plus One, and is currently working on her debut adult novel. She is a banter enthusiast always in search of scary movies, delicious carbs, and her next five-star read. She once helped a British film crew make a documentary about creative dog grooming and has a terrible fear of waterslides. She lives in Central Pennsylvania with her partner and their cats, Cheese and Tux.

David Rose

Go to Author Page

David Rose is an investigative journalist and author whose work has appeared in dozens of publications, including The Observer and Vanity Fair. His books of nonfiction include In the Name of the Law: The Collapse of Criminal Justice, Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves, Guantanamo: America’s War on Human Rights, and The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice. He is also the author of a novel, the thriller Taking Morgan. An avid amateur caver and mountaineer, his next project is The World Beneath the World, a nonfiction book about caving that combines history, reporting, and memoir. He lives in Oxford with his family.

Matt Roeser

Go to Author Page

Matt Roeser is a book cover designer, author, and illustrator living in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to pursuing freelance full-time, he was an Associate Art Director at Candlewick Press, where he focused on designing book jackets. His work has been recognized in the AIGA 50/50 Show as well as the New England Book Show. Before working in publishing, he led the talented team of designers at Atomicdust, a branding and marketing agency in St. Louis. When not designing, Matt can be found tinkering around with ideas and illustrations for stories in his unique collage style. His picture book debut, Oh No, Astro! was illustrated by Brad Woodard and published by Simon & Schuster.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Go to Author Page

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author, educator, and rabbi. Since her ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in 2008, she has been named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as a “rabbi to watch,” and called one of the top 50 most influential female rabbis by Forward. She has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, Time, is a regular contributor to The Washington Post and The Forward, and has made appearances on GMA3, NPR, CBC, Al Jazeera America, and elsewhere. Her latest publications are On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice, and Mend the World: Spiritual Tools for Healing, Repair, and Justice, an original audiobook from Sounds True. Her previous titles include Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting (a National Jewish Book Award finalist), Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion, and The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism. She is an avid Twitter user and her over 160,000 followers include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Senator Corey Booker, and authors Neil Gaiman, Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle. Her threads on Judaism regularly go viral and spur media coverage. She lives in Chicago with her family.

O.O. Sangoyomi

Go to Author Page

O.O. Sangoyomi is a Nigerian American author with a penchant for African mythology and history. During a childhood of constantly moving around within the US, she found an anchored home in the fictional worlds of books. Sangoyomi is a recent graduate of Princeton University, where she studied English and African American Studies. Her debut novel, Masquerade, an Indie Next Pick and recipient of three starred reviews, was published by Macmillan/Forge in July 2024.

Jason Schmidt

Go to Author Page

Jason Schmidt is the author of a memoir, A List of Things that Didn’t Kill Me, and contributed to the YA anthology I See Reality: Twelve Short Stories About Real Life. His work has appeared in Jeopardy Magazine, Cranky Literary Journal, and ZYZZYVA. He holds degrees in creative writing and law from the University of Washington. Born in Oregon, he currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Jeremy Seal

Go to Author Page

Jeremy Seal is an award-winning travel writer, journalist, reviewer, and tour leader. He is the author of five books of nonfiction: A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat, The Snakebite Survivors’ Club: Travels Among Serpents, Treachery at Sharpnose Point: Unraveling the Mystery of the Caledonia’s Final Voyage, Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus, and Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River. He has written about and traveled extensively in Turkey, and runs numerous tours and holidays there annually. He lives in Bath with his family.

Billy Sharff

Go to Author Page

Billy Sharff is an author who writes picture books and poems for kids of all ages. He is the author of When Santa Came to Stay, illustrated by Eda Kaban (Dial Children’s Books, 2022) and Joan in the Cone, illustrated by Hala Tahboub (Dial Children’s Books, 2025). He received a commendation for the Caterpillar Poetry Prize in 2019, and lives with his wife and daughter in New Hampshire.

Delia Sherman

Go to Author Page

Delia Sherman is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of fiction for adults and young readers. Her novel The Porcelain Dove was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and her young adult novel, The Freedom Maze, won the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her other works include Changeling, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, The Evil Wizard Smallbone, and the collection Young Woman in a Garden and Other Stories. She is a frequent lecturer and teacher, and has taught writing at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop, among many others. Born in Japan, she lives in New York City with her wife, author Ellen Kushner.

Alan Silberberg

Go to Author Page

Alan Silberberg is an award-winning author, cartoonist, and children’s TV creator who has worked with Nickelodeon and Disney. He is the author and illustrator of three middle grade novels: Pond Scum, Milo: Stick Notes & Brain Freeze (winner of the SCBWI’s Sid Fleishman Humor Award), and The Awesome, Almost 100% True Adventures of Matt & Craz. He is the author of multiple Jewish holiday and food-themed books published by Viking: the picture books Meet the Latkes, Meet the Matzah, and Meet the Hamantaschen, and the board books Latke’s First Hanukkah and P is for Pastrami. He lives with his family in Montreal.

Josh Similien

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Josh Similien is an illustrator and visual development artist. Before pursuing his lifelong passion for art, Josh served in the U.S. military, with tours in Afghanistan and Iraq as a government contractor. He is passionate about visual storytelling – growing up he loved newspaper cartoons and filled drawers with clippings of comic strips and his own drawings, and he later became mesmerized by the movement of drawings in animation. Outside of animation and cartooning Josh enjoys movies, tv, music, and dance. He is currently studying Character Animation at the California Institute of the Arts.

Elsa Sjunneson

Go to Author Page

Elsa Sjunneson is a Deafblind author and editor living in Seattle, Washington. Her fiction and nonfiction writing has been praised as “eloquence and activism in lockstep” and has been published in dozens of venues around the world. She has been a Hugo Award finalist nine times, and has won Hugo, Aurora, and BFA awards for her editorial work. When she isn’t writing, Sjunneson works to dismantle structural ableism and rebuild community support for disabled people everywhere. Her debut memoir, Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, released in October 2021 from Simon & Schuster.

Kelley Skovron

Go to Author Page

Kelley Skovron is the author of over a dozen books for adults and young readers. Her novels for adults include the Empire of Storms trilogy (Hope and Red, Bane and Shadow, Blood and Tempest) which has been published in nine foreign territories, and the Goddess War trilogy (The Ranger of Marzanna, The Queen of Izmoroz, The Wizard of Eventide). Her middle grade and young adult novels include the G.I. Joe Classified series, The Hacker’s Key, The Ghost of Drowned Meadow, Man Made Boy, and This Broken Wondrous World. Her next middle grade horror, No Filter, was published in February 2024 by Scholastic. Kelley’s short fiction for young readers has appeared in anthologies such as Grim and Summer Days and Summer Nights, and her work has been published in ChiZine and Baen’s Universe, among others. As J.S. Kelley, she is the author of Gutter Mage. She and her cat currently live in a bread factory in Ohio.

Patrick Smith

Go to Author Page

Patrick Smith is an airline pilot, air travel blogger, and author. His “Ask the Pilot” column was a fixture in Salon for over ten years. He currently hosts the popular site Ask the Pilot, which covers all aspects of air travel, and is the author of the bestselling book Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections. He has appeared on over 200 radio and television outlets, and his work is frequently cited in numerous publications worldwide. An avid traveler who has visited more than eighty countries, he currently lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Leah Stecher

Go to Author Page

Leah Stecher was born and raised in Southern California and currently lives in coastal Maine. By day, she edits policy papers for an environmental nonprofit; by night, she writes middle grade fiction. Her debut novel, The Things We Miss, was published by Bloomsbury in May 2024; it was an Indie Next Pick and received three starred review. She has strong opinions on tea blends, chocolate chip cookie recipes, and action movies.

T.J. Stiles

Go to Author Page

T.J. Stiles is an award-winning historian and author. His most recent book, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America won the Pulitzer Prize for History. He is also the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a New York Times bestseller which received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, winner of the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship. He is a current NEH Public Scholar and former Guggenheim Fellow, and has served on the faculty for the World Economic Forum and on the board of the Authors Guild, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and children, where he is working on a new biography of Theodore Roosevelt.

Sally Susman

Go to Author Page

Sally Susman is the Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pfizer, leading their external engagement, which includes global policy, communications, government relations, corporate responsibility, investor relations, and the Chief Patient Office. She is vice chair of The Pfizer Foundation. Her debut book, Breaking Through, was published by Harvard Business Review Press and was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Before joining Pfizer in 2007, Sally held several senior communications and government positions at Estée Lauder Companies and the American Express Company. Before that she spent eight years on Capitol Hill focused on international trade issues and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs in the Clinton Administration. Sally serves as co-chair of The International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid organizations, and is on the board of WPP, the U.K.-based global advertising and marketing company. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a frequent commentator in the media. Sally was named a 2019 Top Voice on LinkedIn and was the recipient of an Outstanding Individual Achievement SABRE in 2022. A graduate of Connecticut College with a B.A. in government, Sally studied at the London School of Economics. She lives in Manhattan and Sag Harbor with her wife Robin Canter.

Jesse Q Sutanto

Go to Author Page

Jesse Q Sutanto is a bestselling and award-winning author of books for adults and young readers. She is the author of the Dial A series, comprised of Dial A for Aunties, Four Aunties and a Wedding, and The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties. Dial A for Aunties was an instant IndieBound bestseller, an Amazon Best Book and Amazon Editors’ Choice, and won the UK’s Comedy Women in Print prize. Her other titles include the Theo Tan middle grade duology, the contemporary YA novels Well, That Was Unexpected and Didn’t See That Coming, the adult thriller I’m Not Done With You Yet, and the cozy mystery Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (a USA Today bestseller and 2024 Edgar Award winner). Her forthcoming titles include You Will Never Be Me, Next Time Will Be Our Turn, Vera Wong’s Guide to Dating a Dead Man, and Worth Fighting For, a Mulan retelling for Disney’s Meant to Be series. She is also the author of the YA thrillers The Obsession and The New Girl. She received her Masters from the University of Oxford. She grew up in Indonesia and Singapore and currently lives in Jakarta with her husband and two daughters.

Ella Synclair

Go to Author Page

Ella Synclair is a former attorney who now writes romance and romantic comedies. She is an alum of Pitch Wars and in addition to writing, she is an artist whose work has been featured in juried art shows and galleries. She lives with her husband and three children in Chicago.

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak

Go to Author Page

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak is an author and award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Republic, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and Psychology Today. Currently the editorial operations director in the Washington, D.C. bureau of Mother Jones, she previously worked for the New York Post, Congressional Quarterly, U.S. News & World Report and was a professor of journalism at American University. She is the accomplished ghostwriter of three high profile books and the author of the acclaimed memoir I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls and Wars in Hungary.

Kate & Danny Tamberelli

Go to Author Page

Kate & Danny Tamberelli are the authors of two romcoms for adults: The First Date Prophecy (2023) and The Road Trip Rewind (2024), published by Kensington. Kate—as Katelyn Detweiler—is a literary agent and the author of the YA novels Immaculate, Transcendent, The Undoing of Thistle Tate, and The People We Choose. Danny is an actor, musician, and comedian who rose to fame on Nickelodeon as the star of TV shows like The Adventures of Pete & Pete, All That, and Figure It Out. He currently hosts The Adventures of Danny & Mike, a podcast with his Pete & Pete co-star Mike Maronna, the live comedy show Nostalgia Personified, and is the bassist for the band Jounce. Kate and Danny live in Brooklyn with their children.

Lian Tanner

Go to Author Page

Lian Tanner is a playwright and award-winning author of books for young readers, including the Keepers series and the Icebreaker series. Museum of Thieves and City of Lies, the first two books of the Keepers series, both won the Aurealis Award for Children’s Fiction. Her work is available in seven foreign languages. Prior to working as a writer, she was a professional actor and freelance journalist. She lives in Tasmania.

Polo Tate

Go to Author Page

Polo Tate is an actor, artist, comedian, and author of Deep Dark Blue: My Story of Surviving Sexual Assault in the Military, about her experience at the United States Air Force Academy. After leaving the academy, she received her B.A. from the University of Notre Dame. She has made media appearances on Megyn Kelly TODAY, spoken at TEDx, and is a regular contributor to Mogul. She is Director of the R.E. Olds Foundation, the oldest family/private foundation in the state of Michigan, named for her great-grandfather Ransom Eli Olds, inventor of the Oldsmobile. As an actor and comedian, she regularly performs at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, Broadway Comedy Club, Reckless, and the PIT. She lives in New York City.

They Might Be Giants

Go to Author Page

They Might Be Giants is an American alternative music group from Brooklyn, New York. The group was founded by John Flansburgh and John Linnell, who released their first album in 1986. Throughout their 35+ year career, the band has racked up several charting albums and singles, as well as two Grammy awards—one in 2002 for their song “Boss Of Me”, (the theme song for Malcolm in the Middle) and the other in 2009 for their children’s album Here Come The 123s. They continue to record alternative albums while branching out into the realm of children’s music, and have sold over 4 million records in total.

Addie Thorley

Go to Author Page

Addie Thorley is the author of An Affair of Poisons, which was chosen as a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee, and the Night Spinner duology, comprised of Night Spinner and Sky Breaker. Her next YA novel, Burn the Kingdom Down will be published by Sourcebooks Fire in 2024. Before becoming a full-time writer, she graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Utah. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and children.

Jennifer Thorne

Go to Author Page

Jennifer Thorne is the author of Lute and Diavola (a USA Today bestseller), published by Tor/Nightfire. With Lee Kelly, she is co-author of The Antiquity Affair (2023) and The Starlets (2024), published by HarperMuse. As Jenn Marie Thorne, she is the author of the YA novels The Wrong Side of Right, The Inside of Out, and Night Music, and her short fiction appeared in the YA anthology Battle of the Bands (Candlewick, 2021). She is also the author of the picture book Construction Zoo. She received her BFA in Drama at NYU-Tisch, and currently lives in Gloucestershire, England with her husband and two sons.

Michele Thornton

Go to Author Page

Michele Thornton is a young adult author, currently working on her debut novel. She received her degree in English with a focus on creative writing, and later worked in marketing. She grew up in New England, and currently lives in Oregon.

Julie Tollefson

Go to Author Page

Julie Tollefson is a writer and editor whose short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Life is Short and Then You Die: First Encounters with Murder from Mystery Writers of America, and in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, which featured her story “Leah” as its November/December 2018 cover story. In 2016, she received the Hugh Holton Award for unpublished crime fiction manuscripts, given annually by the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter. Julie grew up in the sand hills of Southwest Kansas, where she landed her first paying writing gig just out of high school, investigating such hard-hitting stories as “Do blondes really have more fun?” for her hometown newspaper. She has a journalism degree from the University of Kansas and a master’s of library and information management from Emporia State University. She and her husband live in northeast Kansas, where she is at work on her first novel.

Johanna Toruño

Go to Author Page

Johanna Toruño is a TED Talk Speaker, visual artist and creator of The Unapologetic Series, a series of public art gallery to call for unity on matters that affect women of color, to deliver poetic messages of community heritage and activism that started on the streets of NYC, and now is recognized globally. She has self-published her poetry book titled The House in Long Island and has performed her poetry in Los Angeles and New York. She also wrote a piece with her partner, titled “What We Want Young, Queer Latinx People To Know” for Bustle. Her work has been recognized by The New York Times, NPR, Nylon and Teen Vogue. She currently lives in Washington DC, with her wife and their dog.

Trang Thanh Tran

Go to Author Page

Trang Thanh Tran is a queer Vietnamese American writer telling all stories scary, otherworldly, and emotional for young adults and adults. Their YA debut novel, She Is a Haunting, was an instant New York Times and IndieBound bestseller, an IndieNext pick, and was selected by Target and Barnes & Noble as a YA Book Club pick. It was named a finalist for the 2024 William C. Morris YA Debut Award and won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. Their next novel, They Bloom at Night, will be released in March 2025. They are an alum of the Writing Barn’s Rainbow Weekend 2020 and Tin House’s YA Fiction Workshop in 2021. They currently lives in the South with their family and two mischievous cats.

Briana Mukodiri Uchendu

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Briana Mukodiri Uchendu is an illustrator, visual development artist, and a first-generation Nigerian-American. Her work is inspired by her interests in folklore, film, and animation and her passion to highlight voices that usually go unheard. Briana is a graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design where she majored in Illustration. Her illustrations for The Talk by Newbery Honor-winner Alicia D. Williams was juried into The Original Art 2022 by the Society of Illustrators and was awarded the Silver Medal. The book was also named a Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book and an Amazon Best Book of the Year, among many other honors. She received the Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent (Illustrator) for We Could Fly by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell. Her recent and forthcoming books include Soul Step by New York Times-bestseller Jewell Parker Rhodes and Kelly McWilliams (Little Brown, June 2024), Night Market by Seina Wedlick (Random House Studio, September 2024), Night Flight by David Barclay Moore (Candlewick, Fall 2025); Hairstory (Atheneum, Spring 2026), and My Neighborhood (Random House Studio, Fall 2026). She currently lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas.

Taleen Voskuni

Go to Author Page

Taleen Voskuni is the author of two romantic comedies, Sorry, Bro and Lavash at First Sight, published by Berkley. Her work has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Bold Italic, Mic, and Cal Literature & Arts Magazine, and she was an Author Mentor Match Round 8 mentee. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English and lives in San Francisco, running a research company by day, parenting a spirited toddler by night, and writing when she can.

Jonathan Weiler

Go to Author Page

Jonathan Weiler is a professor and author of four books: Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics (winner of the Philip Converse Award from the American Political Science Association), Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide (co-authored with Marc Hetherington), Human Rights in Russia: A Darker Side of Reform and Divorce: A Love Story. He received his PhD in political science from UNC Chapel Hill, where he is Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Chair of Global Studies, and teaches courses on economic globalization, sports and globalization, and human rights.

Scott Westerfeld

Go to Author Page

Scott Westerfeld is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over 20 books for adults and young readers, including the Uglies and Impostors series, the Leviathan trilogy, the Midnighters trilogy, the New York trilogy, the Zeroes series (with Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti), the Spill Zone graphic novel duology, the novel Afterworlds, and the first book in the Horizon series for young readers. His debut picture book, Before You Were Here, is forthcoming from Roaring Brook in September 2024. His books have sold over five million copies worldwide, and his work has been translated into over 32 languages. The highly anticipated film adaptation of Uglies, starring Joey King, will be released on Netflix in September 2024, and an anime adaptation of Leviathan is slated for release in 2025. He has won and been nominated for numerous awards, including the Locus, the Nebula, and the Aurealis. He and his wife, author Justine Larbalestier, split their time between Sydney, Australia and New York City.

Ruth Whiting

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Ruth Whiting is an artist and maker with a diverse body of work, including illustration, large-scale sculptural installations, and classic oil paintings. Her debut trilogy of picture books about a character named Lonely Bird has been acquired by Candlewick. The first title, Lonely Bird, was a Junior Library Guild selection and was released in October 2023. The next book, Lonely Bird’s Dream, will be released in October 2024. She has exhibited in Europe, Australia and America. Born in England to Australian parents, Ruth now lives in Florida with her husband, the artist and kite designer Tim Elverston, and their son. As a child, Ruth wanted nothing more than to read books. Her love of stories fuels her work as an illustrator and author.

Sarah Wilkins

Go to Author Page

Sarah Wilkins is an illustrator who has lived and worked her way around the world, from Paris to New York and back to her roots in New Zealand. Her award-winning art includes editorial and children’s book illustration, posters, book covers, products and environmental design. Sarah’s illustrations have appeared on buildings, buses, bags and many other curious places, but they feel most at home on the pages of beautiful books. She’s illustrated over a dozen children’s books with publishers around the globe, and is currently working on her debut as an author-illustrator.

Lili Wilkinson

Go to Author Page

Lili Wilkinson is the author of over a dozen books for children and young adults, including the YA novels The Boundless Sublime, After the Lights Go Out, and The Erasure Initiative. Her latest YA novel, A Hunger of Thorns, was published in April 2023. Her forthcoming titles, Deep is the Fen and Unhallowed Halls, are forthcoming from Delacorte in Spring 2024 and 2025 respectively. As L.M. Wilkinson, she is the author of Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria, the first in a new middle grade series illustrated by Lavanya Naidu. She helped establish InsideADog.com.au and The Inky Awards — Australia’s first national teen choice award — at the State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature. She received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne, and lives in Melbourne with her husband and son.

Sean Williams

Go to Author Page

Sean Williams is the author of over 100 published short stories and 40 novels for children and adults, including Impossible Music, the Twinmaker trilogy, and three books in the Star Wars: New Jedi Order series. His novelization, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was a #1 New York Times bestseller. With Garth Nix, he is the co-author of the Troubletwisters series, the Have Sword, Will Travel series, and Spirit Animals: Blood Ties. His latest releases are Her Perilous Mansion and Honour Among Ghosts, a middle grade fantasy duology. Called “the premier Australian speculative fiction writer of the age” by Aurealis magazine, he has received multiple Aurealis and Ditmar Awards, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and received an Antarctica Arts Fellowship. He lives in Adelaide, where he is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Flinders University.

Fiona Wood

Go to Author Page

Fiona Wood is the award-winning author of four novels of young adult fiction, including Six Impossible Things, Wildlife, Cloudwish, and Take Three Girls, co-written with Simmone Howell and Cath Crowley. Her debut middle grade novel, How to Spell Catastrophe, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2022. She has received three Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards and has been published internationally. Before becoming an author, she was a television scriptwriter, worked in marketing and arts management, and was a freelance journalist. She lives with her husband in Melbourne, Australia.

Colin Woodard

Go to Author Page

Colin Woodard is an award-winning journalist and the author of six books: Ocean’s End: Travels Through Endangered Seas; The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier; The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (a New York Times bestseller and the basis for the NBC series Crossbones, starring John Malkovich); American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (a Wall Street Journal bestseller and named a Best Book by The New Republic and The Globalist); and American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good. His latest book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, was published in June 2020 by Viking. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, an interdisciplinary research, writing, testing and dissemination project focused on counteracting the authoritarian threat to American democracy and the centrifugal forces threatening the federation’s stability. He is also a POLITICO contributing editor. He is on sabbatical from his position as State and National Affairs Writer for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and George Polk Award winner for investigative reporting. He lives with his family in Maine.

Geraldine Woods

Go to Author Page

Geraldine Woods is a former educator and the author of more than 50 books, including English Grammar for Dummies, which has been translated into ten languages, and Webster’s New World Punctuation: Simplified and Applied. She taught for three decades at the prestigious Horace Mann School, where she created dozens of curricular units, many for grammar instruction and writing that have been emulated by teachers across the country, and around the world. She continues to mentor and advise educators. She wrote dozens of other For Dummies books such as College Admission Essays for Dummies, and Research Papers for Dummies. She is the author of Independent Study That Works: Designing a Successful Program, 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way, and Sentence.: A Period to Period Guide to Building Better Readers and Writers, all from W.W. Norton. She lives in New York City, where she keeps a blog, Grammarian in the City, providing wry commentary on language trends and the pretentious or incomprehensible signs she observes on her walks.

Lindsey Yankey

Go to Author Page Go to Portfolio

Lindsey Yankey is a children’s book illustrator and author. Her book My Grandma and Me (written by Mina Javaherbin) was nominated for the 2020 Kate Greenaway Medal and received four starred reviews; Bluebird and Sun and Moon, both written and illustrated by Lindsey, each won Kansas Notable Book and received starred reviews from Booklist. Her forthcoming titles include My Father’s House (Candlewick, November 2024) and The Dinosaur Seed (Beaming Books, Summer 2025). Lindsey’s illustrations have been exhibited at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, featured in American Illustration, and awarded Gold in 3×3 Magazine‘s International Picture Book Show. She is passionate about children’s literature and the creative process of making picture books. Lindsey enjoys using traditional media including watercolor, oil paint, cut paper, pencil, and linoleum cut. She teaches at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where she lives with her family.

Zoe Zander

Go to Author Page

Zoe Zander is a YA author fascinated by anything horror and macabre. She earned her degree in cinema production and editing, where she transformed her love of visual storytelling into words. She calls freezing Minnesota home, where she lives with her darling cats, Wednesday and her baby brother Trinket.

Andi Zeisler

Go to Author Page

Andi Zeisler is an author and co-founder of Bitch Media, a nonprofit feminist media organization. Her work has appeared in numerous periodicals and newspapers, including Ms., Mother Jones, BUST, the San Francisco Chronicles, and the Women’s Review of Books. A former pop music columnist for the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, has since co-edited BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, authored two books: Feminism and Pop Culture and We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, and contributed to a number of anthologies. She lives in Portland.

Angela Zimmerman

Go to Author Page

Angela Zimmerman is an author, historian and professor of history at George Washington University. She received her M.Phil from the University of Cambridge, and her PhD from the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of a number of scholarly books and texts, including Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was most recently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her latest book, a new history of the Civil War focusing on immigrant radicals and slave rebels, is forthcoming from Knopf.

If we were to gather our authors in one room, it would be the best kind of cocktail party

Fiction

Nonfiction

Young Adult

Children’s

Taylor Adams-Bass

Beth Ain

Sonia Agüera González

TJ Alexander

Tyler Anbinder

Becca Andrews

Clar Angkasa

Craig Archibald

Tami Oldham Ashcraft

Alex Aster

Nafiza Azad

Taryn Bashford

Nora Raleigh Baskin

Jennifer Baumgardner

Estate of Ludwig Bemelmans

Ashley Benham-Yazdani

Ariana Benson

Laurie Berkner

Tamar Bihari

Remica Bingham-Risher

Chesa Boudin

K. Tempest Bradford

Krystle Brantzeg

Posie Brien

Elaine Meryl Brown, Marsha Haygood & Rhonda Joy McLean

Peter Bunzl

Gemma Burgess

Matt Burns

Sasha Cagen

Leah Redmond Chang

Julie Chibbaro

Samantha Chong

J K Chukwu

Lyndall Clipstone

Candice Marley Conner

Desiree Cooper

Rebecca Crane

Codie Crowley

Cody Luke Davis

Barbara Dee

Katelyn Detweiler

Rachel DeWoskin

Alda P. Dobbs

Alechia Dow

Zoé Duhaime

Kris Durán

Andrea Eames

L.M. Elliott

Federico Fabiani

Eliza Factor

Kristen Falso-Capaldi

Jessica Ferri

Bex Tobin Fine

Kylie Flanagan

Jonathan Follett

Kate Forsyth

Corlis C. Fraga

Joanna Franco

Katalina Gamarra

Henry Gee

Pavonis Giron

Salinee Goldenberg

Lori Goldstein

Beverly Gooden

Alison Goodman

Hayden Goodman

b.t. gottfred

Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton

Taylor Grothe

Charlotte Gunnufson

Elnora Gunter

Phillip Gwynne

Margaret Hathaway & Karl Schatz

Sarah L. Hawthorn