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.

Renee Ahdieh is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wrath and the Dawn and The Rose and the Dagger. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In her spare time, she likes to dance salsa and collect shoes. She is passionate about all kinds of curry, rescue dogs, and college basketball. The first few years of her life were spent in a high-rise in South Korea; consequently, Renee enjoys having her head in the clouds.

She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and their tiny overlord of a dog. Her most recent novel is The Flame in the Mist.

Rae Carson is the author of the bestselling and award-winning Girl of Fire and Thorns series.

Her books tend to contain adventure, magic, and smart girls who make (mostly) smart choices. Originally from California, she now lives in Arizona with her husband.

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.

Katie Cotugno is the New York Times bestselling author of Top Ten, 99 Days, 9 Days and 9 Nights, Fireworks, and How to Love. She studied writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in fiction at Lesley University. Katie is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, and Argestes, among others. She lives in Boston. 

Lamar Giles writes novels and short stories for teens and adults. He is the author of the Edgar Award nominees Fake ID and Endangered, as well as the YA novel Overturned.

He is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books, and he resides in Virginia with his wife.

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.

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.

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.

E. K. Johnston is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several YA novels, including the L.A. Time Book Prize finalist The Story of Owen and Star Wars: Ahsoka.

Her novel A Thousand Nights was shortlisted for The Governor General's Award. The New York Times called The Story of Owen “a clever first step in the career of a novelist who, like her troubadour heroine, has many more songs to sing" and in its review of Exit, Pursued by a Bear, The Globe & Mail called Johnston "the Meryl Streep of YA," with "limitless range." E. K. Johnston lives in Stratford, Ontario.

Julie Murphy writes fiction and non-fiction children's books about animals and nature, and has been published in Australia and internationally. Julie is a former zoologist and zookeeper who aims to encourage a love of books and the natural world in her readers.

Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he previously worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve.

Garth's books include the award-winning young adult fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen and Clariel; the dystopian novel Shade's Children; the space opera A Confusion of Princes; and a Regency romance with magic, Newt's Emerald. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of the Seventh Tower sequence; the Keys to the Kingdom series; and the Troubletwisters series and Spirit Animals: Blood Ties (co-written with Sean Williams).

More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world, his books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Times and The Australian, and his work has been translated into forty-one languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.

Sabaa Tahir grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s eighteen-room motel.

There, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother’s comic book stash, and playing guitar badly.

She began writing An Ember in the Ashes while working nights as a newspaper editor.

She likes thunderous indie rock, garish socks, and all things nerd. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family.