Renée Watson is the acclaimed author of the teen novel, This Side of Home, and two picture books: Harlem's Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, which was featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Her middle grade novel, What Momma Left Me debuted as an ABA New Voices Pick. She lives in New York City.

Varian Johnson is the author of several novels for children and young adults, including The Parker Inheritance, which won both Coretta Scott King Author Honor and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awards; The Great Greene Heist, an ALA Notable Children's Book and Kirkus Reviews Best Book; and the graphic novel Twins, illustrated by Shannon Wright, an NPR Best Book. Originally from Florence, South Carolina, he received an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is honored to now be a member of the faculty. Varian currently lives outside of Austin, Texas with his family.

Leah Henderson writes for young readers of all ages, and her books have been named a Children's Africana Book Awards Notable and a Bank Street Best Book.

Leah holds an MFA in writing and is on the faculty of Spalding University's graduate writing program. She resides in Washington, D.C.

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.

Kekla Magoon is the author of several books for young adults, including 37 Things I Love, the Coretta Scott King Honor/John Steptoe Award-winning The Rock and the River, and the Coretta Scott King Honor book How It Went Down. She has also contributed to the anthology Dear Heartbreak: YA Authors and Teens on the Dark Side of Love. She lives in Vermont. keklamagoon.com

Jason Reynolds is crazy about stories and writing. But until he discovered reading in the sixth grade, books were nothing more than disappointing birthday gifts from his Grandma.

Now he makes it his mission to write exciting books for kids (particularly boys) who mistakenly think that all books are boring.

He is the author of the critically acclaimed When I Was the Greatest and has won multiple awards for many other titles, ranging from middle grade to YA fiction.

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.

Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of the young adult novel Beasts Made of Night, which won the Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African, its sequel, Crown of Thunder, and War Girls. He holds a B.A. from Yale, a M.F.A. in screenwriting from the Tisch School fo the Arts, a Master's degree in droit economique from Sciences Po, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

His fiction has appeared in Panverse Three, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Obsidian, Omenana Magazine, Uncanny, and Lightspeed. His non-fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Nowhere Magazine, the Oxford University Press blog, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places. Riot Baby is his adult fiction debut.

Rita Williams-Garcia's Newbery Honor-winning novel, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The sequel, P.S. Be Eleven was also a Coretta Scott King Author Award winner and an ALA Notable Children’s Book for Middle Readers.

Tracey Baptiste is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction for children including The Jumbie series, and The Totally Gross History of Ancient Egypt. She is also a contributor to the adult horror anthology Sycorax's Daughters. Ms. Baptiste volunteers with We Need Diverse Books, The Brown Bookshelf, and I Too Arts Collective. She teaches in Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA program, and runs the editorial company Fairy Godauthor.

Dhonielle Clayton is the co-author of the Tiny Pretty Things series. She grew up in the Washington, DC, suburbs on the Maryland side and spent most of her time under her grandmother's table with a stack of books.

A former teacher and middle school librarian, Dhonielle is cofounder of CAKE Literary-a creative development company whipping up decidedly diverse books for a wide array of readers-and COO of the non-profit, We Need Diverse Books.

She's got a serious travel bug and loves spending time outside of the USA but makes her home in New York City, where she can most likely be found hunting for the best slice of pizza.

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.