October 21, 2024
Tom Birdseye grew up in North Carolina and Kentucky, where he enjoyed sports and outdoor fun. He wasn’t into reading until age 19, when a friend shoved a book in his face and said, “You’ve got to read this, no excuses.” It was The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. By the bottom of page one he was hooked. After attaining university degrees in mass communications and elementary education, Tom taught fifth grade, lived a year in Japan teaching English as a second language, and graduated to teaching kindergarten (“kinda’ like herding cats”) until he published his first book at age […]
September 9, 2024
Tomi Oyemakinde grew up in London, UK before being uprooted at the age of six to the Netherlands, then Kuwait, Norway and Scandinavia. The child of Nigerian immigrants, he considers himself a “third culture kid.” While attending a boarding school in England, he developed a passion for fantasy stories, influenced initially by Richard Adam’s Watership Down. At one stage, Tomi aspired to be a rapper, but studied electrical and electronic engineering at City University of London, then pursued a greater love for stories and a desire to write. Although he found that finishing a piece was a lot harder […]
July 5, 2024
Peter J. Stavros is an award-winning author and playwright whose debut young-adult novel comes out in August 2024 (The Thing About My Uncle, BHC Press). He is also author of the young-adult basketball novella Tryouts. A licensed attorney, former reporter for the Associated Press and one-time gospel radio DJ, he earned a BA in English from Duke University, where he received the prestigious Newman Ivey White Award for Fiction, and studied creative writing on a graduate level at Emerson College and Harvard University. He has published short story collections, creative non-fiction and essays, and his plays have been performed […]
May 3, 2024
Edgar Calabia Samar, born in San Pablo City, Philippines in 1981, is the award-winning author of works including Eight Muses of the Fall, longlisted for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize, and the five-book series, Janus Silang (Tuttle Publishing 2023 & 2024). The latter is a young-adult fantasy series that features other worlds, mythology and online gaming. Edgar has been called “one of Asia’s best-known writers,” and one reviewer has said, “If Britons have Harry Potter and Americans have Percy Jackson, we Filipinos have Janus Silang.” He has also written award-winning short stories, essays and poetry, had his works […]
March 1, 2024
Michael F. Stewart, whom Kirkus Reviews has compared with Roald Dahl, is the award-winning author of 23 books in various genres — typically darkly humorous with a twist of magic. He published his first book in 2008. Recent titles include young-adult (YA) novels Counting Wolves, Heart Sister, Ray vs. the Meaning of Life and The Momentous Expiration of Tremmy Sinclair. Michael grew up the third of three brothers in Mississauga, Ontario, and graduated from McMaster University with a Masters degree in Business. After a short career in venture capital, he pursued his passion for writing. In 2023, he received […]