Tracey West is the New York Times bestselling author of Dragon Masters, a series in the Scholastic Branches line. She has written more than 400 books for kids, including the Pixie Tricks series and the Underdogs series with Kyla May. Some readers also know Tracey for writing books based on animation such as Pokémon and LEGO Ninjago. She currently lives in the western Catskills of New York with her husband, Bill; their adopted dogs; and a whole mess of chickens.

Carla Jablonski is the author and editor of dozens of best-selling books for teenage and middle-grade readers. She grew up in New York City, where she attended public schools and the Bronx High School of Science. She has a BA in anthropology from Vassar College and an MA from NYU's Gallatin School, an interdisciplinary program for which she combined playwriting, the history of gender issues in 19th Century Circus, and arts administration. "I wanted to write the play, contextualize the play, and learn how to produce the play for my degree," she explains. "I think I may have been the happiest graduate student at NYU—I SO loved working toward my thesis." While still in graduate school she supported herself as the editor of The Hardy Boys Mysteries. "When I interviewed for the job they asked me if I'd ever read the Hardy Boys as a kid. 'No way,' I scoffed. 'Those are BOY books! It was Nancy Drew for me!' Luckily my future boss had a sense of humor. She hired me after I promised I'd read the books if I got the job." She has participated in the renowned Breadloaf Writers' Conference as well as Zoetrope's All-Story highly competitive writing workshop held at Francis Ford Coppella's resort in Belize. She has taught writing for the children's market, as well as "cold-reading" skills for teachers as part of Project:Read. Several of her books have been selected as part of the Accelerated Reader's program. She continues to work freelance as an editor for publishers and for private clients, even as she writes novels and creates new series. She also has another career (and identity!) as a playwright, an actress, and a trapeze performer. "I try to keep the worlds separate," she explains about her multiple identities. "The different work I do has different audiences, so I want to keep them apart. But they're all me—they're all ways of expressing what I'm thinking and feeling—just in different mediums."

Megan Stine is the Editor-in-Chief of Real U Guides and the author of more than 100 books for young readers including Trauma-Rama, an etiquette book for teenagers published by Seventeen magazine, and several titles in a series based on the popular 1990’s television series Party of Five. A frequent writer of books in the enormously popular Mary-Kate and Ashley series, she is the best-selling author of Likes Me, Likes Me Not and Instant Boyfriend. She has worked with CBS and ABC in developing comedy and drama television pilots, and has written comedy material for a well-known radio personality in New York. When she isn’t writing, she is a portrait and fine art photographer and a contributing photographer for the Real U series of guides.

Carol Ellis is an American author of young adult and children’s fiction. Her first novel, My Secret Admirer, was published in 1989 by Scholastic as part of their popular Point Thriller line. She went on to write over fifteen novels, including a few titles in the Zodiac Chillers series published by Random House in the mid-1990s, and two titles in The Blair Witch Files series for young adults, published by Bantam between 2000 and 2001.