Tim Floreen majored in English at Yale and earned a Master’s degree in creative writing at Boston University. He now lives in San Francisco with his partner and their two cats. Willful Machines is his first novel.

Suzanne Young is the New York Times bestselling author of The Program series. Originally from Utica, New York, Suzanne moved to Arizona to pursue her dream of not freezing to death.

She is a novelist and an English teacher, but not always in that order. Suzanne is also the author of Girls with Sharp Sticks, All in Pieces, Hotel for the Lost, and several others novels for teens.

Marieke Nijkamp is the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends. She is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and geek. She currently resides in her home country, the Nertherlands.

Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of Promise of Shadows, Vengeance Bound and the Devil's Pass series. An active figure in the YA community, she has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University and started a database for sensitivity readers at Writing in the Margins.

Brandy Colbert was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri. Her debut novel, Pointe, won the 2014 Cybils Award for young adult fiction and was named a best book of 2014 by Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and more.

She was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for spring 2014. She is also the author of Little & Lion, which was a Junior Library Guild and a Book of the Month Club selection, and Finding Yvonne. Brandy lives in Los Angeles and works as a copy editor.

Alaya Dawn Johnson has been recognized for her short fiction and YA novels, winning the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Novelette for "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i," which also appears in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (2015), guest edited by Joe Hill.

Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince (Arthur A. Levine, 2013), was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her follow up YA novel, Love is the Drug, won the Andre Norton Award in 2015. She is currently based in Mexico City, though travels frequently to New York.

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.

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.