Katherine Applegate is the author of The One and Only Ivan, winner of the 2013 Newbery Medal. Her novel Crenshaw spent over twenty weeks on the New York Times children's bestseller list, and her first middle-grade stand-alone novel, the award-winning Home of the Brave, continues to be included on state reading lists, summer reading lists, and class reading lists. Katherine has written three picture books: The Buffalo Storm; The Remarkable True Story of Ivan, the Shopping Mall Gorilla (often used as a companion book to The One and Only Ivan for younger readers); and Sometimes You Fly (publishing in spring, 2018). For beginning readers, Katherine wrote Roscoe Riley Rules, a seven-book series. With her husband, Michael Grant, Katherine co-wrote Animorphs, a long-running series that has sold over 35 million books worldwide. Katherine lives in Marin County, California, with her family and assorted pets.

Cheryl Byrd was born on 9 June 1947 in Clarksville, Tennessee, USA, daughter of Nancy, a sales manager, and Smith Henry Byrd, a military officer. As an army brat, she has lived in Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, southern California, Great Britain, and Germany. Growing up, she changed schools ten times in twelve years. She has been an Anglophile since she discovered the Dr. Dolittle books at about the age of seven. After enduring serious frustration when she could not learn to talk to the animals, she stuck to reading and devoured the Mary Poppins series, the Borrowers, and anything else English she could find, enjoying, as she grew, many British writers including the wonderful Jane Austen and even the Bard himself. And somewhere along the way, the writing bug bit, as well. On 2 June 1967, she married Q. J. Wasden, a sales manager. They had two children: Quinton John and Michelle Nicole, and divorced in September 1979. On 20 June 1982, she married Charles O. Zach Jr., the president of a die casting company, who died on 1990. She obtained a BA (1968) and MA (1977) in English Literature at Austin Peay State University. She worked as high school English teacher in Harrison County, MS, 1970-71; as freelance journalist, 1976-77; high school English teacher in Dyersburg, TN, 1978-82; before stopping to write full time. As Cheryl Zach, she wrote Young Adult and romance novels, she also used the pseudonym of Jennifer Cole. So after publishing over thirty books in various genres, she was thrilled to write books. But, she loves history, most of all English history, and most wanted to write historical adventure set in the English Regency period–Jane Austen’s era. The first books as Nicole Byrd were written with her daughter Michelle Nicole Wasden Place. When Michelle became too busy with a growing family to do more than function as the world’s best critique partner, the later books were written on her own. The books in the Sinclair Family Saga have been a delight to write, and the characters have become as familiar and beloved as old friends. Her book Benny and the No-Good Teacher was a nominee for the South Carolina Children’s Book Award and her book, The Class Trip was an International Reading Association/Children’s Book Award. Zach is the first young adult writer to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America’s Hall of Fame. She was also the first recipient of Young Adult Network’s Silver Diary Award. Her historical novel, Hearts Divided, won the 1996 Virginia Romance Writer’s Holt Medallion in the Young Adult category. Her articles have appeared in The Writer magazine, Children's Writer, and the Writer's Handbook. She is the current chairperson of the SCBWI Regional Advisors.

I was born in New Britain, Connecticut, and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I also spent a year (5th grade) in Montgomery, Alabama, and a year in Ann Arbor, Michigan(8th grade). As a child, I always wanted to be a writer, but I had lots of other ambitions too. I wanted to be a teacher, a librarian, a movie star, the president of the United States, and a ballerina. I didn't achieve all my goals. I never became a movie star, the president of the U.S., or a ballerina. But I've been a teacher and a librarian and most of all, a writer. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I always kept a diary. I wrote poems, stories, plays, songs and lots of letters. Writing wasn't easy for me, but it felt natural and right. I've always read a lot, too. I was an English major at Emory University (I love Shakespeare), and I also received a master's degree in library science at Emory. I earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago, and I taught children's and teen literature at St. John's University in New York for over 20 years. Now, I'm a full-time writer, living in Paris, France - the most beautiful city in the world.