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.

Renee Ahdieh 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. The Rose and the Dagger is the sequel to her sparkling debut novel, The Wrath and the Dawn.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.