Alan Gratz is the bestselling author of a number of novels for young readers. His 2017 novel Refugee has spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and is the winner of 14 state awards. Its other accolades include the Sydney Taylor Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Award, a Charlotte Huck Award Honor, and a Malka Penn Award for Human Rights Honor. Refugee was also a Global Read Aloud Book for 2018. Alan’s novel Grenade debuted at number three on the New York Times bestseller list, and his most recent book, Allies, debuted at number two on the list and received four starred reviews. His other books include Prisoner B-3087, which was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Readers pick and winner of eight state awards; Projekt 1065, a Kirkus Best Middle Grade Book of 2016 and winner of five state awards; Code of Honor, a YALSA Quick Pick for Young Readers; and Ban This Book, which was featured by Whoopi Goldberg on The View. Alan has traveled extensively to talk about his books, appearing at schools and book festivals in 39 states and a half-dozen countries, including Brazil, Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, and Switzerland, and has been a Writer in Residence at Tokyo’s American School in Japan, the James Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, and the Jakarta Intercultural School in Indonesia. Alan was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, home of the 1982 World’s Fair. After a carefree but humid childhood, Alan attended the University of Tennessee, where he earned a College Scholars degree with a specialization in creative writing, and, later, a Master’s degree in English education. He now lives with his family in Asheville, North Carolina, where he enjoys playing games, eating pizza, and, perhaps not too surprisingly, reading books.

Tony Earley (born 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, but grew up in North Carolina. His stories are often set in North Carolina. Earley studied English at Warren Wilson College and after graduation in 1983, he spent four years as a reporter in North Carolina, first as a general assignment reporter for The Thermal Belt News Journal in Columbus, and then as sports editor and feature writer at The Daily Courier in Forest City. Later he attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he received an MFA in creative writing. He quickly found success writing short stories, first with smaller literary magazines, then with Harper's, which published two of his stories: "Charlotte" in 1992 and "The Prophet From Jupiter" in 1993. The latter story helped Harper's win a National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994. In 1996, Earley's short stories earned him a place on Granta's list of the "20 Best Young American Novelists", and shortly after that announcement, The New Yorker featured him in an issue that focused on the best new novelists in America. He has twice been included in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology. His writing style has been compared by critics to writers as distant as a young Ernest Hemingway and E. B. White. One of his favorite writers is Willa Cather.

I am a verified kook magnet. Delightful loose cannons attach to me like cat hair on velvet sofas. Why? Because I’m one of them, a kindred spirit secreting a chemical akin to pheromones that attract the misfit species to which I joyfully belong. The beauty of this becomes the cuisine for my writing, my characters, themes and plots. I’m a Southerner who has lived in Georgia, South Carolina, and now the mountains of Western North Carolina and such locales are soaked in opportunities to cross paths with colorful individuals whose stories simply floor me. I once met a man convinced a hoodlum gorilla was trying to steal his 1955 DeSoto. Said the primate was behind the wheel taunting and grinning at him and possibly armed. Not long after that, I encountered Yelling Woman who constantly called the sheriff about a band of teensy prostitutes living and fornicating under her single-wide. Not to mention the lady I met who poured out beer to kill her snails and had to call the law because the squirrels gulped the beer, got plastered, and caused mayhem in her yard. Or the man who got a DWI on horseback when he and Old Smokey galloped through the McDonald’s drive-through, ordering both him and his horse a Happy Meal. I am telling the truth. As a former syndicated columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times and Gannett Newspapers, I’ve won dozens of national awards for such columns and feature stories. Funny thing is, I didn’t start out to become a professional writer. During junior high, I was the awkward buck-toothed nerd who stole away to the attic to write the worst love poems ever penned. It was my father, a conservative who was concerned when I came out as a liberal at age 7, who told me nursing was where it was at. “For young women like you who may never get husbands.” Hmm. I entered nursing school and worked summers as a Nurse Tech at a Georgia hospital, expertly changing Depends and giving hot, soapy enemas. My greatest claim to nursing fame was when I woke a man from a deep coma. He was 87 and my supervisor forced me to give him a sponge bath. A full one. All parts. No skipping areas that my 18-year-old near-virgin self wanted to avoid. Once I began, eyes closed, bathing his “region”, he moaned and popped a wobbly erection. As I flew from the room, he cried, “Don’t gooooooooo. Stay and play with me.” I quickly changed my major to journalism, ignoring my dad’s warning of no husband. In summary, I’ve worked for newspapers, magazines, have been a guest on national radio shows (one of which was Playboy), performed stand-up comedy, and was a keynote speaker for some prestigious writers events. I was also a speaker for some crummy gigs I’d like to forget. It was my boyfriend after college, a man twice my age afflicted with monolithic OCD, who gave me a copy of a book that changed my life: A Confederacy of Dunces. That is when I knew I’d write both humorous essays (aspiring to be David Sedaris) and novels. My first book, Not Tonight Honey: Wait ‘til I’m a Size 6 sold enough that I bought a breast lift and a modest home with money left for a new roof. I have a few other published books as well. My debut novel Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle was signed by a great agent. She couldn’t sell it. I went on to publish with a small press and it won the IPPY for Best Southern Fiction. When I lost my job as a columnist due to massive lay-offs, I became a makeup artist for Lancome, all while dealing with a young adult son struggling with addiction, the inspiration for latest my novel, The Beautiful Misfits. I tried all I could to help him and realized treatment centers in this country were lacking and not fully effective. One size fits all, our country’s model, has led to raging recidivism. So when I wrote The Beautiful Misfits, I researched countless centers, interviewed those with addiction, and came up with an unconventional treatment plan offering myriad options for recovery and reentry into society.

Fred Davis Chappell retired after 40 years as an English professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002. He attended Duke University. His 1968 novel Dagon, which was named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Academie Française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic. His literary awards include the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Vicki Lane is the author of AND THE CROWS TOOK THEIR EYES as well as THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS and of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries from Bantam Dell:IN A DARK SEASON, OLD WOUNDS, ART'S BLOOD,SIGNS IN THE BLOOD. Vicki and her family have lived in western North Carolina on a mountain farm since 1975. For lots more info, go to http://vickilanemysteries.com which has a section on the writing of CROWS (and recipes and FAQ about writing and who knows what all. or check Vicki's blog http://vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com