Eileen Ruvane fell into a book at a very young age and has happily never climbed her way out. She’s written professionally on a weird and wonderful range of topics from stock options and whiskey to rhinoceros transport, zombie diets, and rotten teeth. By far her favorite thing to write is stories for children, including young adult mysteries, middle grade adventures, and funny picture books. Her debut YA novel is set to release in 2026 with Abrams/Amulet. Eileen and her husband live in the Pocono Mountains, where they raised three amazing kids and co-founded a brewpub and craft distillery.

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Jeff Sampson started writing professionally at the tender age of eighteen, working on packaged series fiction—notably, the series Remnants by the great Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant. Several years later, at twenty-two, he had his first book published as part of the Dragonlance series of fantasy novels. He wrote four more novels for that sequence before striking off with the Deviants series from HarperCollins: Vesper, Havoc, and Ravage, all from Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins Children's Books. As well, under the pen name Christopher Holt, he is the author of the four novels in The Last Dogs series.

Lindsay Schlegel is a freelance editor with experience at a top literary agency, a major publishing house, and a now-defunct chain bookstore, and the author of Don't Forget to Say Thank You. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and German from Boston College. Lindsay lives in New Jersey with her high school sweetheart and their children. She is currently at work on a novel.

Maryjo Scott is an illustrator, poet and mother of three. She presently lives in the hills of Connecticut with her family, one little brown eyed dog, two geckos, a chinchilla named licorice and a flock of talkative hens.  If she’s not in her garden looking for caterpillars and toads, you can find her in her other favorite place, the library.

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Bonghyun Shin is an illustrator based in Seattle, where she lives with her husband, two lovely children and a dog. She was born and raised in South Korea and has a Master of Art in architecture and interior design from Hongik University of South Korea. She loves to use various skills that combine bold lines, vibrant colors, and rough textures to create her unique style. These help to enhance and create a greater depth of meaning behind the feel of her pieces. She enjoys making adorable characters and pays particular attention to displaying their emotions. Her focus on facial expressions and illustrious settings will immerse her readers into her world. When she is not drawing, she is walking, cooking, reading, and playing with her dog Bella.

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Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette and the nonfiction work, Abolition is Everything. Her plays have been performed in theaters nationally and internationally. In 2009, she co-founded Words Without Walls, which brought creative writing programming to jails, prisons, and drug treatment centers in Pennsylvania for 13 years. Sarah's work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and her writing about the impact of mass incarceration on women's lives has appeared in The Iowa Review, Creative Nonfiction, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere.

Avery Silverberg is a born and raised Los Angeleno. When she’s not writing, she spends most of her time obsessing over YA strong female protagonists on Bookstagram (you can follow her @a.very.fast.reader). Avery graduated from Chapman University in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and now works as Social Media Manager at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons (she/her) produces award-winning cultural work in documentary filmmaking, writing, public speaking. She is the editor of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press). Her lived experiences as a survivor of childhood and adult sexual violence, a Black feminist lesbian, and a long-term Buddhist practitioner inform the creation of her work. Aishah is the producer/director of the 2006 groundbreaking, Ford Foundation-funded film, NO! The Rape Documentary.  Presently, she is both a 2020 Soros Media Fellow and training to become a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher.  Aishah revels in sharing sacred time with her partner Sheila at home or anywhere an adventure will take them. 

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Angie Smibert is the author of the middle grade trilogy, Ghosts of Ordinary Objects, which includes Bone's Gift, Lingering Echoes, and The Truce (Boyds Mills Press). She's also written several YA science fiction novels, including Memento Nora, numerous short stories, and over 30 science/technology books for kids. Angie teaches writing for Southern New Hampshire University's MFA program as well as for Indiana University and Virginia Western Community College. Before this, she was a science writer and web developer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. She lives in Virginia with a goofy dog (named after a telescope) and three bickering cats (named after Tennessee Williams characters), and puts her vast store of useless knowledge to work at the weekly pub quiz.

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Linda Joan Smith is a former magazine editor and the author of several garden books. As a kid, her passions were making and eating cherry pie, fly-fishing with her dad, and getting lost in the pages of a book. As a grown up, those same loves abide. Her debut middle-grade novel, The Peach Thief, will be published in 2025 (Candlewick). Along with writing middle-grade and YA historical fiction, she can also be found cooking and eating Thai food, painting, and savoring adventures with her husband and daughter. She lives and works on California’s Monterey Peninsula.

Ruth Spiro is the author of over twenty-five Baby Loves Science board books (Charlesbridge), as well as the picture books One Small Spark, A Tikkun Olam Story (Dial), Love Grows (Harper), a new series How to Explain Science to a Grown-up (Charlesbridge), and more. Growing Together (Harper) is forthcoming in 2025. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

Jolie Stekly is a writer, teacher, speaker, and writing coach. She is an instructor for the University of Washington’s Certificate in Writing program, and she also teaches privately. She is incredibly proud of the full shelf of books written by her students and clients. Jolie has been an active member of the SCBWI for over 20 years, volunteering in many roles, including serving as the regional advisor for the Western Washington region. She frequently writes and speaks for the SCBWI, and she presents the new attendees’ orientation at national SCBWI conferences. She was honored as SCBWI Member of the Year in 2009. Her short story Ghosts Around These Parts represents Washington State in THE HAUNTED STATES OF AMERICA anthology (Godwin Books/Macmillan, 2024). The story is set where she lives in the Pacific Northwest, at the edge of the Salish Sea, where she loves to both paddle and plunge.

Sarah Tolcser lives and writes in a 100 year old house in New Orleans. She enjoys video games, NBA basketball, and books about girls who blow stuff up. She is a graduate of St. Lawrence University, where she double majored in writing and philosophy, two things everyone claimed would keep her unemployed forever. She is married with cats.

Shelley Tougas writes books for tweens and teens, including four middle-grade novels: The Graham Cracker Plot; Finders, Keepers; A Patron Saint for Junior Bridesmaids; and Laura Ingalls is Ruining My Life (all from Roaring Brook). Her nonfiction book Little Rock Girl: How a Photo Changed the Fight for Integration received two starred reviews, was selected as one of School Library Journal's Best Books of 2012, Booklist's Top Ten Editor's Choices for Nonfiction Kids Books 2011, VOYA's 2011 Nonfiction Honor list, and won a gold medal in the 2012 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards. She lives and writes in western Wisconsin.

Sarah Tregay's debut novel in verse, Love & Leftovers, was an ALA pick for Best Fiction for Young Adults. She is also the author of the contemporary young adult novel Fan Art, both published by Katherine Tegen Books/Harper Collins. She lives in Michigan.

Lisa Tyre grew up in a small town in Tennessee where the only form of entertainment was watching her crazy family, and even crazier neighbors. She figured out early on that not every child had a pet skunk, a dad who ran a bar in the front yard, or a neighbor so large his house had to be torn down to get him out. What else could she do but write? Her debut middle grade novel, Last in a Long Line of Rebels, was published in 2015 from Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin Books for Young Readers, and was a BEA Buzz title. Hope in the Holler, her second novel, was published in Spring 2018. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.

Kat Uno has always had a passion for art, and her early love for comics, cartoons, anime, and children’s books has played a great influence on her illustration style. She currently focuses her creative efforts on illustrating children's books. She is the illustrator of the Mermaid Days series of Beginning Readers, the first of which, The Sunken Ship, will be published by Scholastic Books in 2022. Kat lives in Hawaii with her husband and two children.

Bryan Wade is a playwright, radio dramatist and novelist. He has been a playwright-in-resident at Factory Theatre and the Blyth Festival, along with being an invited artist at the Stratford Festival and the Playwrights Colony at the Banff School of Fine Arts. Living on the left coast, Bryan is on the lookout for fault lines and tsunamis. He also teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

Rachel Meltzer Warren is the author of The Smart Girl's Guide to Going Vegetarian (Sourcebooks, 2014) and A Teen's Guide to Gut Health (The Experiment, 2017). She is a registered dietitian and nutrition writer, educator, and counselor. Her work has been featured in Women’s Health, Prevention, Good Housekeeping, Whole Living,  and many other print and online publications. Rachel lives in the New York City area with her family.

Tiffanie Wen is a columnist at BBC Future and freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, Daily Beast, Guernica and others. When she's not writing, she's traveling the world and looking for her next story. She currently splits her time between California and New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband Roy and their dog Benny.