Ortega
New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author, Claribel A. Ortega is a former reporter who writes middle-grade and young adult fantasy inspired by her Dominican heritage. When she’s not busy turning her obsession with eighties pop culture, magic, and video games into books, she’s co-hosting her podcast Bad Author Book Club. Claribel is a Marvel […]
Magaziner
Lauren is the internationally bestselling author of four series: The Incorruptibles, Case Closed, The Mythics, and This Book is Trying to Kill You. She has also written three other stand-alone books for middle grade readers. Her books are available in over a dozen languages, have been longlisted for the PADIBA award, have been Junior Library […]
Wong
Jack Wong (黃雋喬) is the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award-winning author/illustrator of When You Can Swim (Scholastic) as well as the picture books The Words We Share (Annick Press, Fall 2023), All That Grows (Groundwood Books, Spring 2024), The Music Inside Us: Yo-Yo Ma & His Gifts to the World (Spring 2025) and Goodbye, Koi (Fall […]
Sterling
Michelle Sterling is a children’s book author, photographer and speech-language pathologist living in Orange County, California. Many of her stories are inspired by her heritage, family traditions, and her love of gastronomy and food history. When Lola Visits, Michelle’s first picture book illustrated by Aaron Asis, received four starred reviews, was an ALA Notable Children’s […]
Burke Kunkel
Angela Burke Kunkel is an educator by day and a writer in the very early mornings. Her debut picture book, Digging For Words, José Alberto Gutiérrez and the Library He Built (Schwartz & Wade), celebrates perseverance, community, and the power of books. Digging For Words was named an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book, and is the […]
Agostini
Buffalo, NY native Alliah L. Agostini is an award-winning marketer who has marketed everything from iconic brands to scrappy start-ups, but motherhood helped her return to her first love: children’s literature. She writes and speaks to spread joy, truth, and to help more children see themselves reflected on the page. Alliah is a widely sought-after […]
Venable
Colleen AF Venable is the author of indie bestseller Katie the Catsitter graphic novel series with Stephanie Yue (nominated for 14 state awards), as well as the National Book Award Longlisted Kiss Number 8, a graphic novel co-created with Ellen T. Crenshaw. Her other books include The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom with Lian Cho, […]
Bousamra
Rose Bousamra is an experienced comics professional, specializing in illustration and graphic novels for kids and young adults. Their first graphic novel, Frizzy, written by Claribel A. Ortega and published with First Second Books, earned a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, the Pura Belpre award for Children’s Text, an Eisner Award nomination (Best Publication […]
Park
Patricia Park is a tenured professor of undergraduate and graduate MFA creative writing at American University, a former Fulbright scholar in Creative Arts, Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, and American Association of University Women fellow, and author of the debut young adult novel, Imposter Syndrome & Other Confessions Of Alejandra Kim, (2023), What’s […]
Goodluck
Award-winning author Laurel Goodluck writes picture books with modern universal themes and everyday life, showing Native children and all children that their cultural perspective is unique and powerful. Laurel comes from an intertribal background. She is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in North Dakota and an Alaska Native Citizen of […]