Scott Westerfeld is best known as the author of the Uglies series, a number-one New York Times bestseller, and the Leviathan and Zeroes trilogies, both New York Times bestsellers. His standalone novels include So Yesterday, and Afterworlds.

His other works include the Midnighters trilogy, the Peeps and Risen Empire duologies, and the eponymous first book of the Horizon multi-platform series. His novels have won the Philip K Dick Special Citation, the Aurelius Award (twice), the Victorian Premier's Award, and have been named New York Times Notable Books and Best Books for Young Adults Top Ten Children's Books of the Year.

Scott co-wrote the Shay's Story Uglies-based graphic novels with Devin Grayson. He is also the author of the graphic novel Spill Zone, illustrated by Alex Puvilland. He lives in Sydney and New York.

Margo Lanagan is an acclaimed writer of novels and short stories. Black Juice was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and won two World Fantasy Awards and the Victorian Premier's Award for Young Adult Fiction.

Red Spikes won the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a Horn Book Fanfare title, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Her novel Tender Morsels won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and was an Honor Book in the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

Her novel Sea Hearts was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and won a WA Premiers Book Award, the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers, The Norma K Hemming Award and the Barbara Jefferis Award, an Indie Award and an Aurealis Award among many other honours.

Zeroes, and its sequel Swarm, co-authored with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti, were New York Times bestsellers.

Deborah Biancotti has published two short story collections. Her Aurealis-shortlisted Bad Power explored ordinary people discovering their superpowers.

All three authors live in Sydney, where they are part of the overlapping communities of writers of genre and young adult fiction. They meet at a pub to keep the Zeroes series on track and squabble about characters' motivations.