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.

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.