Sona Charaipotra has worked as a celebrity reporter at People and TeenPeople and has contributed to publications from the New York Times to TeenVogue. 

She is the co-founder of CAKE Literary, a boutique book packaging company with a decidedly diverse bent, and the co-author of the YA dance dramas Tiny Pretty Things and Shiny Broken Pieces, as well as the psychological thriller The Rumor Game. She is a proud We Need Diverse Books team member.

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.

Sangu Mandanna was four years old when an elephant chased her down a forest road and she decided to write her first story about it. Seventeen years and many, many manuscripts later, she signed her first book deal. She lives in Norwich, in the east of England, with her husband and kids.

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.

Naz Kutub is a half-Indian, half-Malay immigrant from Singapore. This novel was inspired by his personal experiences growing up as a queer Muslim, and as someone raised on a calorie-dense diet of Eastern lore.

Nikita Gill is a British-Indian poet, playwright, writer and illustrator living in the south of England. She has published five collections of poetry: Your Soul Is A River (Thought Catalog), Your Heart is the Sea (Thought Catalog), Wild Embers (Trapeze), Fierce Fairytales (Trapeze) and Great Goddesses (Ebury).

She is the editor of the poetry anthology SLAM! (Macmillan’s Children’s Books) and her next book, a novel in verse called The Girl and Goddess was published by Ebury on National Poetry Day 2020.

Tanaz Bhathena was born in Mumbai and raised in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Toronto. She is the winner of the 2009 MARTY for Emerging Literary Arts, a semi-finalist for the 2013 Jeffrey Archer Short Story Challenge and the Readers' Choice pick for the 2015 U of T Magazine Short Story Contest.

Her short stories have appeared in various journals, including Blackbird, Witness and Room Magazine. A Girl Like That is her first novel.

Nafiza Azad is a self-identified island girl. She has hurricanes in her blood and dreams of a time she can exist solely on mangoes and pineapple. Born in Lautoka, Fiji, she currently resides in British Columbia, Canada where she reads too many books, watches too many K-dramas, and writes stories about girls taking over the world. Her debut YA fantasy was the Morris Award–nominated The Candle and the Flame.