Marieke Nijkamp is the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends. She is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and geek. She currently resides in her home country, the Nertherlands.

Mackenzi Lee holds a BA in history and an MFA from Simmons College in writing for children and young adults. Her short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Atlas Obscura, the Boston Globe, Crixeo, and the Newport Review, among others.

Her debut novel, This Monstrous Thing, won the PEN New England-Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award. Her second book, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, was a New York Times bestseller and an ABA bestseller, earned five starred reviews, was a #1 Indie Next Pick, and received a 2018 Stonewall Book Award Honor and a New England Book Award.

She loves Diet Coke, sweater weather, and Star Wars. On a perfect day, she can be found enjoying all three. She currently calls Boston home, where she works as an independent bookstore manager and pets every dog she meets.

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.

Anna-Marie McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and taught by their family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds.

They are the author of The Weight of Feathers, a finalist for the 2016 William C. Morris Debut Award; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, Blanca & Roja, Dark and Deepest Red, The Mirror Season, and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix.

Stacey Lee is the New York Times and Indie bestselling author of historical and contemporary young adult fiction, including The Downstairs Girl, a Reese's Book Club Late Summer 2021 YA pick, and her most recent novel, Luck of the Titanic, which received five starred reviews. A native of southern California and fourth-generation Chinese American, she is a founder of the We Need Diverse Books movement and writes stories for all kids (even the ones who look like adults). Stacey loves board games, has perfect pitch, and through some mutant gene, can smell musical notes through her nose.

Dhonielle Clayton is the co-author of the Tiny Pretty Things series. She grew up in the Washington, DC, suburbs on the Maryland side and spent most of her time under her grandmother's table with a stack of books.

A former teacher and middle school librarian, Dhonielle is cofounder of CAKE Literary-a creative development company whipping up decidedly diverse books for a wide array of readers-and COO of the non-profit, We Need Diverse Books.

She's got a serious travel bug and loves spending time outside of the USA but makes her home in New York City, where she can most likely be found hunting for the best slice of pizza.

Meg Medina is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears, which was a 2018 Kirkus Prize finalist.

She is also the author of award-winning YA novels and the picture books Mango, Abuela, and Me, illustrated by Angela Dominguez, which was a Pura Belpré Author and Illustrator Award Honor Book, and Tía Isa Wants a Car, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award.

The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Dahlia Adler is an editor of mathematics by day, a book blogger by night, and a Young Adult author at every spare moment in between. She is the editor of the anthologies His Hideous Heart (a Junior Library Guild selection) and That Way Madness Lies, and the author of Cool for the Summer. She lives in New York with her family and an obscene number of books.

Jessica Spotswood is the editor of A Tyranny of Petticoats, the companion volume to The Radical Element. She grew up near the Gettysburg battlefield, in Pennsylvania, but now lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for the District of Columbia Public Library system as a children's library associate.