Elissa Brent Weissman is the award-winning author of several middle grade novels, including the Nerd Camp series, and the editor of Our Story Begins, an anthology of writing and art by today's kids' book creators back when they were kids themselves.

She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and earned a Master's degree in children's literature at Roehampton University in London.

Named one of CBS Baltimore's Best Authors in Maryland, Elissa lives with her family in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing to children, college students, and adults.

Kathi Appelt is the author of the Newbery Honoree, National Book Award finalist and bestselling The Underneath as well as the National Book Award finalist The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, Keeper, and many picture books, including Counting Crows.

She has two grown-up children and lives in College Station, Texas, with her husband.

Gail Carson Levine's first book for children, Ella Enchanted, was a Newbery Honor Book. Levine's other books include Ever, a New York Times bestseller; Fairest, a Best Book of the Year for Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and a New York Times bestseller; Dave at Night, an ALA Notable Book and Best Book for Young Adults; The Wish; The Two Princesses of Bamarre; A Tale of Two Castles; and the six Princess Tales books. She is also the author of the nonfiction books Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly and Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink, as well as the picture books Betsy Who Cried Wolf and Betsy Red Hoodie. Gail Carson Levine and her husband, David, live in a two-centuries-old farmhouse in the Hudson Valley of New York State.

Chris Grabenstein is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Island of Dr. Libris and Escape from Mr. LemonCello's Library as well as the co-author (with James Patterson) of the #1 Bestselling series I Funny, House of Robots, and Treasure Hunters.

Thanhha Lai is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Inside Out & Back Again, her debut novel in verse, which won both a National Book Award and a Newbery Honor, and the acclaimed Listen, Slowly, which was named to numerous best book of the year lists.

She was born in Viet Nam and now lives in New York with her family. To learn more about Thanhha and her charity, Viet Kids Inc.,

Tom Anglebergeris the bestselling author of many books for children, including the beloved Origami Yoda series, the Qwikpick Papers series, and the Inspector Flytrap series. He lives in Virginia.

Grace Lin is the award-winning and bestselling author and illustrator of Starry River of the Sky, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat, Dumpling Days, and Ling & Ting, as well as picture books such as Caldecott Honor Book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, and A Big Bed for Little Snow. Grace is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Massachusetts.

Chris Gall is the award-winning author and illustrator of Dog Vs. Cat, Awesome Dawson, Revenge of the Dinotrux, Substitute Creacher, and Dinotrux, a Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book.

He is also the illustrator of America the Beautiful, another Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Gordon Korman wrote his first book at age fourteen and since then has written more than eighty middle grade and teen novels. Favorites include the New York Times bestselling The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers, Book One: The Medusa Plot; Ungifted; Pop; and Schooled. Gordon lives with his family on Long Island, New York.

Alex Gino loves glitter, ice cream, gardening, awe-ful puns, and stories that reflect the diversity and complexity of being alive. George is their first novel.

Peter Lerangis is the author of more than one hundred and sixty books, which have sold more than five million copies and been translated into thirty-three different languages.

His books include The Colossus Rises and Lost in Babylon in the New York Times bestselling Seven Wonders series, and two books in The 39 Clues series (The Sword Thief and The Viper's Nest).

Peter is a Harvard graduate with a degree in biochemistry and has run a marathon and gone rock climbing during an earthquake - though not on the same day. He lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, and their two sons, Nick and Joe. In his spare time, he likes to eat chocolate.

Candace Fleming is the author of more than twenty distinguished books for children including The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction, the NCTE Orbus Pictus Award, and a Sibert Honor, among other awards.

Tim Federle is a former Broadway dancer turned award-winning writer whose works include the bestselling cocktail recipe books Tequila Mockingbird and Gone With the Gin, the novels Better Nate Than Ever and The Great American Whatever (each named notable books of the year by the New York Times), and the Tony-nominated Broadway musical Tuck Everlasting. A native of San Francisco who grew up in Pittsburgh, Tim now divides his time between New York and the internet.

Kwame Alexander has written seventeen books, owned several publishing companies, written for television (TLC's Hip Hop Harry), recorded a CD, performed around the world, produced jazz and book festivals, hosted a weekly radio show, worked for the U.S. government, and taught in a high school.

Recently Kwame was a visiting writer in Brazil and Africa. He resides in the Washington, DC, area, where he is the founding director of Book-in-a-Day (BID), a program that teaches and empowers teenagers to write and publish their own books.

The idea for He Said, She Said came during a writing workshop he conducted with thirty smart, funny, feisty, insecure, and ambitious young people in Charleston, South Carolina - which, by the way, is his favorite place on earth (behind Bahia, Accra, and Tuscany, of course).

Marla Frazee has illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including God Got a Dog by Cynthia Rylant; Stars by Mary Lyn Ray; All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, which received a 2010 Caldecott Honor;

Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers; and Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild! by Mem Fox; as well as her own Farmer and the Clown; Boot & Shoe; The Boss Baby; Walk On!; Roller Coaster; Santa Claus the World’s Number One Toy Expert; and A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, which received a 2009 Caldecott Honor.

She is also the illustrator of the bestselling Clementine chapter book series by Sara Pennypacker. She lives in Pasadena, California.

Eric Rohmann won the Caldecott Medal for "My Friend Rabbit" and a Caldecott Honor for "Time" "Flies."

R. J. Palacio lives in NYC with her husband, two sons, and two dogs. For more than twenty years, she was an art director and graphic designer, designing book jackets for other people while waiting for the perfect time in her life to start writing her own novel.

But one day several years ago, a chance encounter with an extraordinary child in front of an ice cream store made R. J. realize that the perfect time to write that novel had finally come. Wonder is her first novel. She did not design the cover, but she sure does love it.

Linda Sue Park, recipient of the Newbery Medal for A Single Shard, is the bestselling author of many books for young readers, including picture books, poetry, and historical and contemporary fiction.

Born in Illinois, Ms. Park has also lived in California, England, and Ireland. She and her husband, a journalist, now live in Rochester, New York, and have two grown children.

Multi-award-winning illustrator Brian Selznick was born in New Jersey in 1966. His interest in art began at an early age: His family claims that on visits to his grandmother, three-year-old Brian would fashion dinosaur sculptures out of tinfoil he'd been given to keep him out of trouble. "Even in kindergarten," Selznick recalled in an interview with Scholastic Books, " I remember drawing and having the other kids gather around because they liked what I was drawing."

He took art classes after school and studied at The Rhode Island School of Design. Although he thought he wanted a career in theatrical set design, after graduation Selznick decided he would like to try illustrating children's books. He went to work for a prominent (now defunct) Manhattan bookstore called Eeyore's, where he learned about the business and put his art to use painting the windows for holidays and special events. Around this time, he wrote and illustrated his first children's book, The Houdini Box.

His manager and mentor at Eeyore's helped find him a publisher. The book came out in 1991, while Selznick was still working at the store. Since then, Selznick has illustrated many other award-winning children's books, including Andrew Clements's Frindle, Pam Muñoz Ryan's When Marian Sang, and Barbara Kerley's The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. But his crowning masterpiece is an ambitious project entirely of his own creation, a groundbreaking 500-page tour de force that combines the elements of a picture book, graphic novel, and film.

Published in 2007, The Invention of Hugo Cabret follows the adventures of an orphan who secretly lives in the walls of a Paris train station, as he tries to complete a mysterious invention left by his father. Intricate, innovative, and utterly spellbinding, the story was nominated for a National Book Award and received the coveted Caldecott Medal, America's top prize for children's illustration.

Selznick divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and San Diego, California.

Cynthia Leitich Smith is the acclaimed and best-selling author of three books in the Feral series, as well as the Tantalize quartet and two graphic novels based on the Tantalize series, both illustrated by Ming Doyle.

She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, author Greg Leitich Smith.

Rita Williams-Garcia's Newbery Honor-winning novel, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The sequel, P.S. Be Eleven was also a Coretta Scott King Author Award winner and an ALA Notable Children’s Book for Middle Readers.