Adi Alsaid was born and raised in Mexico City. He attended college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He's now back in Mexico City, where he writes, coaches basketball, and makes every dish he eats as spicy as possible. In addition to Mexico, he's lived in Tel Aviv, Las Vegas and Monterey, California. His previous YA books include Let's Get Lost, Never Always Sometimes, North of Happy, Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak, and We Didn't Ask for This.

Maria E. Andreu is an Argentinian American author whose work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the Newark Star Ledger. Her debut young adult novel, The Secret Side of Empty, inspired by her experiences as an undocumented immigrant and a speaker of English as a second language, is a Junior Library Guild Selection, a National Indie Excellence Book Award winner, and an International Latino Book Awards finalist.

Misa Sugiura's ancestors include a poet, a priestess, a samurai, and a stowaway. She grew up in Northfield, Illinois (which is less rural than it sounds), and went to college on the East Coast.

She lived in Japan for three years before moving to Silicon Valley and becoming a high school English teacher. She is also the author of It's Not Like It's a Secret. Misa lives under a giant oak tree with her husband, two sons, two cats, and a gray-banded king snake.

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. 

Maurene Goo studied communication at UC San Diego and then later received a Masters in publishing, writing, and literature at Emerson College. She is the author of Since You Asked... and I Believe in a Thing Called Love. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two cats.

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.

Zoraida Cordova is the award-winning author of The Vicious Deep trilogy and the Brooklyn Brujas series.

Her short fiction has appeared in the New York Times bestselling anthology, Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, and Toil & Trouble: 16 Tales of Women and Witchcraft. She is a New Yorker at heart and is currently working on her next novel.

Alaya Dawn Johnson has been recognized for her short fiction and YA novels, winning the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Novelette for "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i," which also appears in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (2015), guest edited by Joe Hill.

Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince (Arthur A. Levine, 2013), was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her follow up YA novel, Love is the Drug, won the Andre Norton Award in 2015. She is currently based in Mexico City, though travels frequently to New York.

Sara Farizan, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, lives near Boston. She is the award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel. She is an MFA graduate of Lesley University and holds a BA in film and media studies from American University. Here To Stay is her third novel.

Lilliam Rivera is the author of The Education of Margot Sanchez and is a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner. She is a freelance writer with work in Tin House, the Los Angeles Times, and Latina, among others. Originally from the Bronx, New York, Lilliam now lives in Los Angeles with her family.