Kwame Alexander has written seventeen books, owned several publishing companies, written for television (TLC's Hip Hop Harry), recorded a CD, performed around the world, produced jazz and book festivals, hosted a weekly radio show, worked for the U.S. government, and taught in a high school.

Recently Kwame was a visiting writer in Brazil and Africa. He resides in the Washington, DC, area, where he is the founding director of Book-in-a-Day (BID), a program that teaches and empowers teenagers to write and publish their own books.

The idea for He Said, She Said came during a writing workshop he conducted with thirty smart, funny, feisty, insecure, and ambitious young people in Charleston, South Carolina - which, by the way, is his favorite place on earth (behind Bahia, Accra, and Tuscany, of course).

Soman Chainani belives in fairy tales even more than the children of Gavaldon do. While studying at Harvard, he practically created his own 'fairy tale' major and wrote his thesis on why evil women make such irresistible fairy-tale villains.

Soman is also an acclaimed screenwriter, whose films have played at more than 150 film festivals around the world, winning more than 30 jury and audience prizes.

When he's not telling stories or teaching in New York City, Soman is a die-hard tennis player who never lost a first-round match for ten years. Then he started writing The School for Good and Evil. Now he loses all the time

Grace Lin is the award-winning and bestselling author and illustrator of Starry River of the Sky, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat, Dumpling Days, and Ling & Ting, as well as picture books such as Caldecott Honor Book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, and A Big Bed for Little Snow. Grace is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Massachusetts.

Meg Medina is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears, which was a 2018 Kirkus Prize finalist.

She is also the author of award-winning YA novels and the picture books Mango, Abuela, and Me, illustrated by Angela Dominguez, which was a Pura Belpré Author and Illustrator Award Honor Book, and Tía Isa Wants a Car, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award.

The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Jacqueline Woodson is the is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the 2018 Children's Literature Legacy Award.

She is the 2014 National Book Award winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor.

She receive the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner.

Her books include The Other Side, Each Kindness, Coming On Home Soon, Feathers, Show Way, After Tupac and D Foster, and Miracle's Boys. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature.