Maureen Johnson was born in Philadelphia, but soon ran off to New York City to study writing and drama at Columbia University.

Along the way, she served up hamburgers in the company of mad scientists and talking skeletons in New York, worked in a bar in Piccadilly Circus, nervously worked alongside five tigers in Las Vegas, and once got mixed up with the entire cast of a major West End musical.

She is the author of The Key to the Golden Firebird and The Bermudez Triangle.

Claudia Gray is the New York Times bestselling author of a number of YA paranormal series (Evernight, Spellcaster, Firebird) as well as the author of two Star Wars books for Disney/Lucasfilm.

She writes novels full-time, and hopes to do this forever.

Her home is in New Orleans is over a hundred years old and is painted purple.

In her free time she reads, travels, hikes, cooks and listens to music.

Libba Bray is the author of the New York Times bestselling Gemma Doyle Trilogy, which comprises the novels A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing.

In 2010 she was awarded the Michael L. Printz award for her satirical road-trip novel Going Bovine, which was also shortlisted for the Australian Centre for Youth Literature's Inky Award.

Libba has written satire crossing Lost with America's Next Top Model in Beauty Queens, a finalist for the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, plus short stories about everything from Cheap Trick concerts to The Rocky Horror Picture Show devotees to meeting Satan worshippers on summer vacation.

Libba lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son, and two cats, and is part of an all-YA author band called Tiger Beat (for realz).