Danielle Paige is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dorothy Must Die series, the Stealing Snow series, the graphic novel MERA Tidebreaker, and the forthcoming Archie comic, Betty Cooper: Superteen. In addition to writing young adult books, she works in the television industry, where she’s received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She is a graduate of Columbia University and currently lives in New York City.

Amerie‪ is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, producer, and writer of fiction, as well as the editor of the New York Times bestselling anthology Because You Love to Hate Me. The daughter of a Korean artist and an American military officer, she was born in Massachusetts, raised all over the world, and graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s in English. She lives mostly in her imagination, but also on Earth with her husband, son, her parents and sister, and about seven billion other people. Visit her online at Amerie.co.

Somaiya Daud is a writer, scholar, and speaker. In 2018 her debut novel, Mirage, was released in the United States with Flatiron Books and the United Kingdom with Hodder & Stoughton. It was hailed as “poetically written”, “immersive and captivating” and “beautiful and necessary” by The School Library Journal, Booklist and Entertainment Weekly. Mirage has been shortlisted for the Children’s Africana Book Award and the Arab American Book Award. In 2020 Somaiya received her PhD in English Literature studies with a focus on world literature and nineteenth-century orientalism.

Karen Strong is the author of the critically acclaimed middle grade novel Just South of Home, which appeared on several Best of Year lists including Kirkus Reviews Best Books, CCBC Choices, and Bank Street Best Books. Her short story “The Witch’s Skin” appears in the young adult anthology A Phoenix First Must Burn. Born and raised in the rural South, Karen spent most of her childhood wandering the woods, meadows, and gardens of her grandmother’s land. A graduate of the University of Georgia, Karen lives and writes in Atlanta. Visit her at karen-strong.com.