Geoff Herbach's young adult novels, Stupid Fast, Nothing Special, I'm With Stupid, and Fat Boy vs. The Cheerleaders, have been listed in the year's best by many associations who seem to know what they're talking about.

Clint Edwards is the founder of No Idea What I'm Doing parenting blog and author of I'm Sorry... Love Your Husband. He's a parenting staff writer for the New York Times, Huffington Post and the Washington Post. He lives in Lebanon, Oregon.

Pete Hautman is the author of many books for young adults and adults, including the National Book Award–winning Godless, the Klaatu Diskos trilogy, and Eden West.

His most recent book for middle-grade readers is Slider, which Booklist lauded for its “crystalline prose, delectable detail, and rip-roaring humor.” Pete Hautman divides his time between Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Joseph Bruchac is the author of many critically acclaimed novels, poems, and stories, many drawing on his Abenaki heritage. Mr. Bruchac and his wife, Carol, live in upstate New York.

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).

Adam Rex is the author and illustrator of many beloved picture books and novels, including Nothing Rhymes with Orange, The True Meaning of Smekday (which was made into the major motion picture Home), and the New York Times bestseller The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors.

He has illustrated the work of many authors, including Jon Scieszka, Mac Barnett, Jeff Kinney, Kate DiCamillo, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Neil Gaiman. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Aaron Brown, who goes by the moniker AB, is a native of South Los Angeles who started his YouTube channel, focused on his parents' and grandparents' traditional grilling and smoking recipes, in 2017, and who quickly grew into one of the most popular food personalities on the entire platform—and across the entire internet.

He is also the co-owner of Elmer and Jasper's Craft BBQ in Rancho Cucamonga, California; the creator of the "AB Grill Master Series" of sauces and spice rubs for outdoor cooking; and the owner of the Southern Que food truck in Las Vegas, which opens as a brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2023. He lives with his family in Los Angeles and Las Vegas..

Alison McGhee is the New York Times bestselling author of Someday, as well as Firefly Hollow, Little Boy, So Many Days, Bye-Bye Crib, A Very Brave Witch, and the Bink and Gollie books, which are co-written with Kate DiCamillo.

Her other children’s books include All Rivers Flow to the Sea and Snap. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota;