Zoraida Córdova was born in Ecuador and raised in Queens, New York.

She is the author of The Vicious Deep trilogy, the On the Verge series, and Labyrinth Lost.

She loves black coffee, snark, and still believes in magic

Libba Bray is the author of the New York Times bestselling Gemma Doyle Trilogy, which comprises the novels A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing.

In 2010 she was awarded the Michael L. Printz award for her satirical road-trip novel Going Bovine, which was also shortlisted for the Australian Centre for Youth Literature's Inky Award.

Libba has written satire crossing Lost with America's Next Top Model in Beauty Queens, a finalist for the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, plus short stories about everything from Cheap Trick concerts to The Rocky Horror Picture Show devotees to meeting Satan worshippers on summer vacation.

Libba lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son, and two cats, and is part of an all-YA author band called Tiger Beat (for realz). 

Nic Stone is a native of Atlanta and a Spelman College graduate. After working extensively in teen mentoring and living in Israel for a few years, she returned to the United States to write full-time.

Dear Martin, her first novel, is loosely based on a series of true events involving the shooting deaths of unarmed African American teenagers.

Shaken by the various responses to these incidents--and to the pro-justice movement that sprang up as a result--Stone began the project in an attempt to examine current affairs through the lens of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachings.

Tessa Gratton has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. Alas, she turned out too impatient to hunt dinosaurs, but is still searching for a someone to teach her magic.

After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in Gender Studies, then settled down in Kansas with her partner, her cats, and her mutant dog.

She now spends her days staring at the sky and telling lots of stories about magic.

Rebecca Roanhorse is a Hugo, Nebula and Locus award-winning speculative fiction writer. She also won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2018.

Her novels Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts are part of the Sixth World series. She lives in northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter and pups.

Natalie C. Parker is the author of the Beware the Wild duology and the Seafire trilogy, and the editor of Three Sides of a Heart: Stories About Love Triangles. Her short fiction has appeared in All Out: The No-Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens. She lives on the Kansas prairie with her wife. Her vampire queen is Caroline Forbes.

Anna-Marie McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and taught by their family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds.

They are the author of The Weight of Feathers, a finalist for the 2016 William C. Morris Debut Award; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, Blanca & Roja, Dark and Deepest Red, The Mirror Season, and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix.