Bradley Steffens is a novelist, poet, playwright, and author of more than forty nonfiction books for children and young adults. Steffens is a two-time recipient of the San Diego Book Award for Best Young Adult & Children's Nonfiction. His Giants won the 2005 award and his People in the News: J.K. Rowling received the 2007 prize. J.K. Rowling also received the Theodor S. Geisel Award for the best published book by a San Diego County author in 2007. Five of Steffens' books, including Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, have been selected by California Readers to be part of the California Collections. Steffens' poetry has appeared in more than seventy literary journals, including Crosscurrents, Sidewalks, Loonfeather, Stone Country, and The Bellingham Review. Steffens has won several prizes for his poetry, including the Emerging Voices Award presented by The Loft Literary Center, the Lake Superior Writing Competition sponsored by the Duluth Public Library, and the annual poetry contest sponsored by the Saint Paul chapter of the American Association of University Women. The Minneapolis-based Olympia Arts Ensemble produced his play-in-verse, Virodha-Bhakti, a Sequence of Pageants in 1981. Noel Bredahl of the St. Paul Post-Dispatch hailed the play as "an awesome creation on the part of the playwright." David Hawley, also of the St. Paul Post Dispatch, wrote, “Steffens is a powerful, talented artist."

Lori Mortensen is an award-winning children's author of more than 100 books. Her books, which reviewers have praised as “stellar” “as good as it gets” and “begs to be read aloud,” have been published by such notable publishers as HarperCollins, Henry Holt, Abrams, Bloomsbury, and Peachtree. Popular releases include, Arlo Draws an Octopus, illustrated by NYT bestselling author/illustrator Rob Sayegh, Jr., If Wendell Had a Walrus, illustrated by NYT bestselling author/illustrator Matt Phelan, Cowpoke Clyde Rides the Range, a Bill Martin Jr., Picture Book Award Nominee and the sequel to Amazon bestseller Cowpoke Clyde and Dirty Dawg, and picture book biographies Nonsense! The Curious Story of Edward Gorey and Away with Words, the Daring True Story of Explorer Isabella Bird. When she’s not greeting geese at the lake, or putting her nose in a mystery, she’s tapping away at her keyboard, conjuring, coaxing, and prodding her latest stories to life. Today, she lives in the foothills of Northern California with her family and all birds that flock to her feeder—including a gluttonous squirrel.

There are multiple authors with this name in the database. Not all books on this profile may belong to the same author. My background in education helped me understand how powerful books are as teaching tools. A book can teach a concept in a way that is different from anything else. When given a good book, young readers are engaged and entertained while learning at the same time. In many ways I’m still teaching when I write; it’s just in a different form. Because I am a teacher and because I have children of my own, I am always looking at the world through curious eyes. When something particularly amazing or peculiar grabs my attention I start thinking about how I could present the information in an interesting way through the platform of a book. Once an idea comes to me, I usually jump into it right away. I tend to write quickly but then have to force myself to let the piece sit and simmer. By giving myself this time, I can get some distance from the initial surge of energy that made me start the book. After that I can go back to it with a more critical, editorial point of view. It is during this stage that the book really comes together and gets fine-tuned.