Saundra Mitchell is the author of over twenty books for tweens and teens. Her work includes two anthologies for teens, Defy the Dark and All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages. For twenty years, she was the head screenwriter and an executive producer with Dreaming Tree Films on their various teen filmmaking programs and earned Academy Award eligibility ten times during her tenure. In her free time, she enjoys fandom, studying history, crochet, and spending time with her wife and her daughters.

Malinda Lo is the author of the young adult novels Ash, Huntress, Adaptation, and Inheritance.Ash was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and was a Kirkus Best Book for Children and Teens.

She has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda's nonfiction has been published by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Huffington Post, The Toast, The Horn Book, and AfterEllen.

Malinda is cofounder with Cindy Pon of Diversity in YA, a project that celebrates diversity in young adult books. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and their dog.

Robin Talley grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, writing terrible teen poetry and riding a desegregation bus to the school across town.

A Lambda Literary Fellow, Robin lives in Washington, D.C., with her fiancée, plus an antisocial cat and a goofy hound dog.

When Robin’s not writing, she’s often planning communication strategies at organizations fighting for equal rights and social justice.

Mackenzi Lee holds a BA in history and an MFA from Simmons College in writing for children and young adults. Her short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Atlas Obscura, the Boston Globe, Crixeo, and the Newport Review, among others.

Her debut novel, This Monstrous Thing, won the PEN New England-Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award. Her second book, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, was a New York Times bestseller and an ABA bestseller, earned five starred reviews, was a #1 Indie Next Pick, and received a 2018 Stonewall Book Award Honor and a New England Book Award.

She loves Diet Coke, sweater weather, and Star Wars. On a perfect day, she can be found enjoying all three. She currently calls Boston home, where she works as an independent bookstore manager and pets every dog she meets.

Kody Keplinger is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of many books for young adult and middle grade readers, including The DUFF, which was adapted into a major motion picture in 2015, and That's Not What Happened.

She teaches writing classes at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City. When she isn't writing, Kody can usually be found playing Dungeons and Dragons, cuddling with her two black cats, or taking long walks with her German shepherd.

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.

Shaun David Hutchinson is the author of numerous books for young adults, including The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried, The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza, At the Edge of the Universe, and We Are the Ants. He also edited the anthologies Violent Ends and Feral Youth and wrote the memoir Brave Face, which chronicles his struggles with depression and coming out during his teenage years. He lives in Seattle, where he enjoys drinking coffee, yelling at the TV, and eating cake.

Dahlia Adler is an editor of mathematics by day, a book blogger by night, and a Young Adult author at every spare moment in between. She is the editor of the anthologies His Hideous Heart (a Junior Library Guild selection) and That Way Madness Lies, and the author of Cool for the Summer. She lives in New York with her family and an obscene number of books.

Born in a mountain cabin to a punk-rocker mother, Tess Sharpe grew up in rural northern California.

Living deep in the backwoods with a pack of dogs and a growing colony of formerly feral cats, she's the author of the thriller Barbed Wire Heart, the critically acclaimed YA novel Far From You, the Jurassic World prequel, The Evolution of Claire, and co-editor of Toil & Trouble, a feminist anthology about witches.

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.

Sara Farizan, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, lives near Boston. She is the award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel. She is an MFA graduate of Lesley University and holds a BA in film and media studies from American University. Here To Stay is her third novel.

Nilah Magruder is an award-winning writer, illustrator, and storyboard artist. She has received the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics, in recognition for her web comic M.F.K.

In addition to comics, she has illustrated for children's books, film, and commercial television as well as Disney and DreamWorks.

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.

Tehlor Kay Mejia is an author and Oregon native. Her short fiction has appeared in the All Out and Toil & Trouble anthologies from Harlequin Teen.

We Unleash the Merciless Storm is her second novel.

Alex Sanchez has published eight novels, including the American Library Association "Best Book for Young Adults" Rainbow Boys and the Lambda Award-winning So Hard to Say.

His novel Bait won the Tom s Rivera Mexican-American Book Award and the Florida Book Award Gold Medal for Young Adult fiction.

He has a master's degree in guidance and counseling and worked for many years as a youth and family counselor.