Wesley King was born in Ajax, Ontario. An accomplished high school athlete, he often incorporates sports into his novels. After graduating from Carleton University with an honors degree in journalism, he published his first novel, The Vindico, about a group of teenage super villains. Later, OCDaniel won both Edgar and Silver Birch awards, and was named a Bank Street Best Book of the Year.

Photo by Nigel Livingstone Nic Stone is the New York Times bestselling author of eight young-adult and middle grade works of fiction. “Raw, captivating and undeniably real, Nic Stone joins industry giants Jason Reynolds and Walter Dean Myers as she boldly tackles American race relations,” Penguin Randomhouse has said. Nic was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. After graduating with a degree in psychology from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to the US to write full-time. Growing up with a wide range of cultures, […]

Glen Huser is a library-consultant-turned-author who has won many prestigious awards. His first novel was Grace Lake, developed from an Edmonton Journal prize-winning play and nominated for the W.H Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. He has also written Touch of Clown (Mr. Christie Silver Medal), Jeremy’s Christmas Wish, Stitches (Governor General’s award and Alberta’s R.Ross Annett Award) and Skinnybones and The Wrinkle Queen (Governor General’s silver medal). Aside from his novels, Huser has made an impact as the founder and developer of Magpie, an Edmonton Public Schools quarterly that showcased writing and graphics by students. He completed two years […]

Fred Aceves was born in New York to a Mexican father and Dominican mother. He spent most of his youth in Southern California and Tampa, Florida, where he grew up in a tough, working-class neighborhood filled with single moms. He attended five high schools and worked two jobs before eventually dropping out of school. He later earned his GED and traveled around the world. He has worked as a delivery driver, server, cook, car salesman, freelance editor and teacher of English as a second language. He is published by HarperCollins and currently lives in Mexico. The Closest I’ve Come was a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. The New David Espinoza is his second novel. Fred has lived in seven different countries and currently resides in Mexico. His online home is www.fredaceves.com.

Jack Heath is the pen-name of an award-winning Australian writer of fiction for children and adults. His thirty-six action-packed novels have been translated into several languages and optioned for film and television.

He is best known for the Danger, Truth App and Hangman series. He has been shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year Award, CBCA Notable Book Award, Nottinghamshire Brilliant Book Award, the Aurealis Sci-Fi Book of the Year, the National Year of Reading "Our Story" Collection, a Young Australians Best Book Award, a Kids Own Australian Literature Award and the Australian of the Year Award.

The Truth App and The Missing Passenger are set in the fictitious Australian town of Kelton. Age thirty-four, Heath lives in Canberra, Australia with his wife Venetia, whose jewelry-making studio shares a shed with his writing office. They have two children. http://jackheathwriter.com; twitter: jackheathwriter

Eric Walters of Guelph, Ontario has published more than 120 novels and picture books, which have won more than 100 awards including the Ontario Library Association’s Silver Birch (3x)and Red Maple (4x) awards, the Governor General’s Award, the U.S.’s Children’s Africana Book Award and the Sakura Medal in Japan.In 2015 Eric received the Order of Canada for his contributions to literacy and social justice issues. He is a highly popular speaker around the world.

He began writing while teaching a Grade 5 class of reluctant readers and writers, in order to encourage them toward literature. Today Eric’s novels are available around the world and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Prior to entering teaching and writing, Eric was a social worker involved in child welfare, including in a mental health treatment centre and an emergency department.

Eric, his wife and two others are co-founders of The Creation of Hope www.creationofhope.com, which provides for more than 400 orphans and disadvantaged children in Kenya. He spends summers in Kenya at his orphanage.

He is the father of three, grandfather of six, and in his free time hikes, paddle boards, spends time at the family cottage and plans his next adventures. His website: www.ericwalters.net

Gordon Korman is the author of more than 90 novels that have sold over 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into 32 languages. He has won numerous awards and reached No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Born in Montreal (his mother a journalist, his father an accountant), he was raised in Toronto and published several books while attending high school before studying film and film-writing at New York University. He is married to a schoolteacher and has three children. These days, he divides his time between New York City, Ontario and Florida. His awards include the International Reading Association’s Children’s Choice Award and the American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults award (three times).

His website: https://gordonkorman.com/

Dan Wetzel is a New York Times best-selling author who has written more than two dozen sports-related books, including the Epic Athletes series of biographies for children.

As a sports writer, Dan Wetzel has worked as the national columnist for Yahoo Sports and Yahoo.com, covering events around the world, including the NFL, college football, the NBA, NASCAR, MLB, NHL, mixed martial arts, men's and women's World Cups and the Olympics. His columns appear in the sports section of Yahoo.com.

He has appeared repeatedly in the anthology the Best American Sports Writing, been honored more than a dozen times by the Associated Press Sports Editors and is regularly a finalist for "National Sportswriter of the Year" which is awarded by the National Sports Media Association.

At Yahoo! Sports he has been part of major investigative stories on pro and college sports, including scandals at Miami, Ohio State, Connecticut, Oregon, USC, the IOC, FIFA, various sports agencies and with in the NCAA itself. He also specializes in sports crime, including covering high profile cases and trials of Jerry Sandusky, Larry Nassar, Aaron Hernandez and others.

As a screenwriter he cowrote the 2014 movie Life of a King, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Dennis Haysbert. He is an executive producer of the Netflix three-part docu-series Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez about the life, crimes and death of former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez. It is in conjunction with Blackfin Entertainment and Momentum Content, both in New York. He also appears in the series.

He cohosts a weekly radio show on Yahoo Sports Radio with Pat Forde. He was a fill-in host on The Sports Inferno in Detroit, Michigan on AM 1270. He anchors the twice-weekly Yahoo Sports College Podcast with Pat Forde and Pete Thamel. Wetzel is a native of Norwell, Massachusetts. He can be found at https://sports.yahoo.com/author/dan-wetzel/

Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the graphic novels New Kid and Class Act. In 2020, New Kid became the only graphic novel in history to win the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature, and it won the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature and the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the most outstanding work by an African American writer. Jerry was born in Harlem and grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City.

Born and raised in the DC Metro Area, Kosoko Jackson is currently a candidate at Southern New Hampshire’s Mountainview MFA program. He writes YA novels featuring African American queer protagonists and is a sensitivity reader for Big Five Publishers. Some of his favorite authors are Courtney Summers, Jen DeLuca, Adib Khorram, Casey McQuiston, Ian McEwan, Alex London, Andi Christopher, Dhonielle Clayton, Ryan LaSalla, Denise Williams and Natalie Parker.
Professionally, he is a digital media specialist and freelance political journalist. His personal essays and short stories have been featured on Medium, Thought Catalog, The Advocate and some literary magazines.
When not writing novels that champion holistic representation of black queer youth across genres, he can be found obsessing over movies, drinking his (umpteenth) London Fog, sampling odd tea flavors or spending far too much time on Twitter.
His 2021 YA debut, Yesterday is History, is published by SourceBooks Fire, and his adult #ownvoices queer romcom, I’m So (Not) Over You, will come out in 2022 with Berkley Romance.
Visit him at Kosokojackson.com or @kosokojackson on Twitter or Instagram.