
Mary Atkinson
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Mary Atkinson holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College. Her poetry for children has appeared in
magazines and anthologies, and her fiction and non-fiction have been
published widely in educational markets. A former teacher, Mary
enjoys conducting poetry workshops in schools and libraries in her
home state of Massachusetts.
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Marianna Baer
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Marianna Baer is the author
of young adult novels Immaculate and Frost House, forthcoming
from Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins in 2010 and 2011, respectively. She
grew up in Cambridge, MA, and received a BA in Art from Oberlin
College and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from
Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she
spends her time writing, drawing, and wishing her apartment building
allowed pets so she could have a bunch of cats and dogs.
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L.A. Banks |
New York Times bestselling author L.A. Banks has penned over 35 novels and 12 novellas in a wide range of genres and is the recipient of the 2008 Essence Magazine Storyteller of the Year Award as well as the 2008 Best 50 Women in Business Award for the State of Pennsylvania. She mysteriously shape-shifts between the genres of romance, women's fiction, crime/suspense thrillers, and, of course, paranormal lore. She is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program with a Master's in Fine Arts from Temple University and she is a full-time writer living/working in Philadelphia.
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Carolee Dean |
Carolee Dean has made numerous appearances as a guest poet/author at
schools, libraries, poetry events, and teacher conferences. In addition, she
was a featured author at the 2002 Texas Book Festival. She holds a
bachelor's degree in music therapy and a master's degree in communicative
disorders. She has spent over a decade working in the public schools as a
speech-language pathologist and has helped to sponsor poetry slam teams at
both the middle school and high school levels. In addition to working with students of all ages in the public schools,
Carolee has also worked with teens in a psychiatric hospital and a head
trauma rehabilitation unit. She teaches courses in both creative writing and
hands-on science writing through a variety of summer programs.
In her first novel, Comfort (Houghton Mifflin), Carolee explores how words
and poetry have the power to change one young man¹s life. In her upcoming
novel, The Road to Huntsville (Simon Pulse, Summer 2010) she follows the
journey of a budding young poet who cannot read or write, but dreams of
using words to escape a life of crime and degradation.
Carolee lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband and children. In
addition to poetry, she loves hiking and biking along the beautiful Rio
Grande River and skiing wherever there are mountains and snow.
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Christine
Deriso |
Christine Hurley Deriso, who earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, writes tween fiction for Random House. Her first two novels, Do-Over and The Right-Under Club, were included in Atlanta Parent Magazine's 50 Must-Read Book lists. Her children's picture book, Dreams to Grow On, received a 2003 Independent Publisher Outstanding Book of the Year Award. Upcoming novels include Talia Talk (2008) and The Right-Under Club: Second Stage (2010).
She has written feature articles and humor essays for national magazines including Ladies' Home Journal, Family Circle, Parents and Child. Her career has also included newspaper journalism, public relations and restaurant critiques. She lives in North Augusta, South Carolina with husband Graham and children Gregory and Julianne.
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Ben
Dolnick |
Ben Dolnick was born in 1982 and grew up outside of Washington, D.C. He now lives in New York with his wife and dog. His debut novel, Zoology, was published in 2007, and his second novel, You Know Who You Are, will be published by Vintage in 2011.
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Marion Downs |
Marion Downs
has been a maverick in the field of pediatric audiology for nearly sixty years. As a result of her work, ninety percent of all babies born in the United States are screened for hearing loss. She has retired many times, but none of them took. She has won several gold medals for tennis in the Senior Olympics, completed a mini-triathlon at eighty-nine, and skydived from a plane at ninety. Downs, the author of Shut Up and Live (You Know How), lives in Denver.
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Darrin Doyle
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Darrin Doyle's
first novel, Revenge of the Teacher's Pet: A Love Story, was
published by LSU Press in March 2009. The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo was published by St. Martin's Press in 2010.
His short fiction has appeared in Puerto del Sol,
Alaska Quarterly Review, The Long Story, Cottonwood, Laurel Review,
and elsewhere. In 2008, he was a Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee
Writers's Conference. He teaches at Kansas State University. |

John C. Ford |
John C. Ford
graduated from Stanford University, where he wrote a
weekly
column for The Stanford Daily, and the University of Michigan Law
School,
where he attended a few classes and lots of football games. His first
novel,
The Morgue And Me (Viking, June 2009), is an Edgar nominee for Best Young Adult Novel. It is a
mystery that he began writing
while practicing law in Washington, DC. (The idea struck him in the
middle
of
a $500 million trial, but hopefully no one noticed what he was writing
on
that
legal pad.) He grew up in Birmingham, Michigan, where he shared a zip
code
with crime-fiction great Elmore Leonard and steeped himself in pulp
detective
novels at the Baldwin Public Library. When he isn't writing, he
practices
amateur photography. |

Megan
Frazer |
Megan Frazer studied English literature and creative writing at Columbia University. She lives with her husband in Maine, where she is a high school librarian. Her first novel, Secrets of Truth and Beauty, was published by Disney-Hyperion in 2009. |

Edward
Hardy |
Edward Hardy grew up in Ithaca, New York and is the author of the novels, Keeper & Kid and Geyser Life. He has an MFA from Cornell and his short stories have appeared in many magazines and literary journals, including, Ploughshares, GQ, The New England Review, Boulevard and The Quarterly, and been listed in The Best American Short Stories. He has been a newspaper reporter and editor, and taught fiction writing at Cornell and Boston College. He currently teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown and lives outside Providence with his wife and two sons. |

Jeff Hirsch |
Jeff Hirsch grew up in Richmond,
VA and received an MFA in Dramatic Writing from UC San Diego. He now
lives in Queens, NY and works at a non-profit
in the ad industry. Besides writing, Jeff enjoys fire eating, escaping
from a
straitjacket (while standing up or hanging from the ceiling by his
ankles),
walking on broken glass and performing a passable version of the human
blockhead routine. Jeff's first
novel The Long Walk Home, will be released in the summer of 2011 by
Scholastic.
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Elizabeth Holmes |
Elizabeth Holmes is the author of two middle-grade novels, Pretty Is (2007) and Tracktown Summer (forthcoming), both from Dutton Children’s Books. She has also published two books of poetry for adults, The Patience of the Cloud Photographer (1997) and The Playhouse Near Dark (2007). A graduate of Davidson College and Cornell University, she works as a writer and editor in Ithaca, New York, where she lives with her husband, the novelist Paul Cody, and their two sons. |

Troy Howell |
Active in the publishing field for over 25 years, author-illustrator Troy Howell is best known for his Brian Jacques' Redwall covers (Philomel) and his collaboration with Mary Pope Osborne on her mythology and folk tales collection (Scholastic Press). Several of his poems, essays, a children's picture book, and an adult short story have been published, and he is currently writing a middle grade novel. His work has won awards and starred reviews, and in 2000 he was nominated for the Virginia Governor's Award for the Arts.
Troy is a member of James River Writers, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and the Illustrators Club of Washington, DC. Abrams will publish his debut
novel for young readers, The Dragon in Cripple Creek, Co., in 2010.
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Holly Nicole Hoxter |
Holly Nicole Hoxter was born and raised in Baltimore, MD and still reluctantly resides there with her three adorable cats. Her first novel for teens, The Snowball Effect, was released by Balzer & Bray in spring 2010.
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Varian
Johnson |
Varian Johnson
is the author of Saving Maddie (Delacorte), My Life as a Rhombus
(Flux/Llewellyn, 2008) and the Essence Magazine Bestseller A Red
Polka Dot in a World Full of Plaid (Genesis Press, 2005). He was
born and raised in Florence, South Carolina, and attended the
University of Oklahoma, where he received a BS in Civil Engineering.
Varian now lives in Austin, TX with his wife, Crystal, and is a member
of SCBWI, the Writers' League of Texas, and The Assembly on Literature
for Adolescents (ALAN).
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J. James Keels |
J. James Keels has reviewed for ALAN Review, is included in the anthology Such a Pretty Face: Short Stories About Beauty (Abrams, 2007) and has completed a young adult novel titled starving hysterical naked. He holds a BA in sociology and human sexuality studies from San Francisco State University, and an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College. He frequently teaches writing at the Community College of Vermont, and currently teaches 5th and 6th grades. |

Karen Kincy |
A shameless nerd and lover of snark, Karen Kincy lives in Olympia, Washington, where she is a junior studying linguistics and computer science at The Evergreen State College. Her debut, Other, will come out from Flux in 2010, with the sequel, Bloodborn, following soon after. Karen ripped off her hometown of Snohomish, WA for the fictional locale of Klikamuks, where Other takes place. When she’s not at her computer, writing, she’s probably out in the forest with her notebook, writing, or on a photography expedition with her trusty digital camera. She likes to imagine werewolves lurking among the trees.
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Heidi
R. Kling
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Heidi R. Kling
earned her MFA in writing for children from the New School
and her BA in creative writing/literature from University of California at
Santa Cruz. Before selling her debut novel, SEA, she wrote and directed
children's theatre in both California and New York. Heidi is active online as
the co-moderator of the debut author community 2010: A Book Odyssey and on
her own blog Sea Heidi Write where she interviews authors about Muppets and
desert islands. She lives with her wonderful husband and children just over
the coastal mountains from the ocean in Palo Alto, California.
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Jacqueline
Kolosov |
Jacqueline Kolosov's young adult novels include The Red Queen's Daughter and the forthcoming A Sweet Disorder, both from Hyperion. Her middle grade novel is Grace from China, and her poetry collections include Vago and the forthcoming Modigliani's Muse and An Impasse of Angels. She won a 2008 NEA Fellowship and is an associate professor at Texas Tech University. She has co-edited two anthologies, most recently The Sincerest Form of Flattery with Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum. New work appears in Orion, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Under the Sun, and others. |

Libby Koponen |
Libby Koponen started writing stories when she was seven. Some readers of Blow Out the Moon (NYPL Top Title for Reading and Sharing; Booklist starred review) have said she should publish her childhood Silly Witch series, which they found very funny. But now Libby is more interested in stories that feel true because they are -- and because of the way they’re written. She writes novels based on real people, nonfiction with strong stories.
She has an MFA from Brown, has travelled (and ridden horses) on every continent except Antarctica, and is always ready for an adventure. This year she hopes to do a school visit in Kenya.
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Nina LaCour |
Nina LaCour writes fiction for teenagers and adults. She has an MFA from Mills College, and teaches English at an independent high school in Berkeley. She has great fondness for photography, cooking, and teenagers. A San Francisco Bay Area native, she lives in Oakland with her girlfriend and their two rambunctious cats. Her first novel, Hold Still, was published by Dutton Books in 2009.
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Jonathan
Maberry |
Jonathan Maberry is a multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers (Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man's Song, Bad Moon Rising and Patient Zero), and several nonfiction books including The Cryptopedia, Vampire Universe, They Bite, and Zombie CSU. Jonathan has written over 1100 feature articles, two plays, and several short stories. Jonathan is the co-creator of On the Slab, an entertainment news show for ABC Disney Stage 9, to be released on the Internet in October 2008. He's a contributing editor for The Big Thrill, the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers, for whom he will also be editing a graphic novel in serial form that will include chapters written by top bestselling thriller authors. Jonathan's also an active member of MWA, HWA and SFWA, a speaker for the National Writers Union, and a frequent guest at writers' conferences and events in a variety of genre.
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Alexa Martin
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Alexa Martin's young adult debut, Girl Wonder, is forthcoming from Hyperion in 2011. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing
from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She has worked many unglamorous
jobs over the years to keep her writing dream alive - such as the time
she worked at a steak house even though she's vegetarian.
She
lives in Olympia, Washington, a beautiful place where it rains an awful
lot. For fun she windsurfs, cross-country skis, hikes, and trail runs
at night with a headlamp during the dark wet winter months (this is
considered normal out here). It is a point of pride when her friends
tell her that she’s acting like a teenager - again.
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Brian
Meehl |
Brian
Meehl is enjoying his third reincarnation. After a career of wiggling puppets on "Sesame Street" and in Jim Henson films, he became an Emmy award winning writer for children's shows such as "Between the Lions" and "Magic School Bus." He has now convinced himself that he is the author of two YA novels. When he recovers from this delusion, he will start thinking about reincarnation number four.
In the meantime, he lives in Connecticut with his family of three females on a farm full of furry animals, and is working on a third novel. So he thinks.
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Michael Northrop |
Michael Northrop has worked as an editor at Sports Illustrated Kids and
The World Almanac and briefly moonlighted as a standup comedian. His
non-fiction has appeared in Sports Illustrated, The Morning News, and
People online, and his fiction and humor have appeared in Notre Dame
Review, Weird Tales, McSweeney's online, and other places.
His YA debut, Gentlemen, was published in April
2009 by Scholastic. A second thriller for young adults, Trapped,
is forthcoming in 2010, and his middle grade debut, Plunked, will be published by Scholastic in 2011.
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Jason Ockert |
Jason Ockert is the author of Rabbit Punches, a collection of short stories. A winner of the Atlantic Monthly Fiction Award and the Mary Roberts Rinehart National Fiction Award, Jason’s stories have appeared in the Oxford American, Black Warrior Review, Indiana Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, McSweeney’s, Ecotone, and Witness. His work is included in the 2007 anthologies of New Stories from the South and Best American Mystery Stories. He has recently completed a second collection of stories and a novel. |

Micah Perks |
Micah Perks is the author of We Are Gathered Here, a novel and Pagan Time, a memoir, as well as many short stories. She has won a Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts grant, two Pushcart Prize nominations and a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She co-directs the creative writing program at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is the provost of Kresge College. |

Randy
Powell |
Randy Powell has published seven novels for young adults, all by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Many have been translated into foreign languages and have been selected for ALA Best Books and other national and state best-book lists. All are now in paperback. His novel Is Kissing a Girl Who Smokes Like Licking an Ashtray? was the winner of the 1992 PEN/West award for Children’s Literature. Randy has taught at the MFA in Writing for Children program at Vermont College, the Whidbey Island Writers Association MFA program, and the BYU Writing for Young Readers Workshop. His eighth novel, Swiss Mist, will be published by FSG in October 2008. A graduate of the University of Washington, Randy lives in Seattle with his wife and two teenage sons. |

Erik Raschke |
Erik Raschke grew up in Denver, Colorado and received a Masters in Creative Writing from The City College of New York. His short fiction has been published in Chelsea, Reading Room, and many other print and online magazines. His first novel, The Book Of Samuel, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2010. He lives with his family in Amsterdam where he is currently finishing up his second novel, The Death of Fiction. |

Brian
Sack |
Brian Sack
is the author of In The Event Of My Untimely Demise: 20 Things My Son Needs To Know (HarperOne). He regularly appears on the Headline News program Not Just Another Cable News Show and as comic relief on the Glenn Beck program. He has written humor for numerous publications in the U.S. and U.K.
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Susan Maupin Schmid |
Susan Maupin Schmid grew up next to a cemetery and has always been interested in things like history, archeology, and mummies. Her science fiction mystery, Lost Time (Philomel 2008), received excellent reviews. Susan writes fantasy, science fiction, and mysteries. She lives in Iowa with her husband and two daughters. |

Peter Schmidt |
Peter Schmidt is a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he covers affirmative action, state and federal higher-education policy, education research, historically black colleges and universities, and connections between schools and colleges. He previously covered school desegregation, urban education, immigrant education, and education research for Education Week. He also has reported for the Associated Press, the Detroit Free Press, the Northern Virginia Daily, and the Ann Arbor News, and he has written for the Weekly Standard, Teacher Magazine, and Detroit Monthly magazine. His work has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Virginia Press Association, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. He has received two National Education Writers Association awards for his work dealing with affirmative action, and he was given the 2007 Unity Award for coverage of minority issues in education.
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Karen
Halvorsen Schreck |
Karen Halvorsen Schreck is the author of the Young Adult novel Dream Journal (Hyperion), a 2006 Young Adult BookSense Pick, and the award-winning children’s book Lucy’s Family Tree. Her short stories and articles have appeared in Literal Latté, as well as other literary journals and magazines, and have received various awards, including a Pushcart Prize and an Illinois State Arts Council Grant. She received her doctorate in English and Creative from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College. Karen lives with her husband and children in Wheaton, Illinois.
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Lisa
Schroeder |
Lisa Schroeder is a native Oregonian, which means her childhood summers were spent camping, fishing, reading books (of course!), and playing in the sun, when it finally came out. These days, Lisa spends her summers, and every other part of the year, sharing all the wonderful things Oregon has to offer with her husband and two sons. She is the author of three verse novels for young adults, all published by Simon Pulse - I Heart You, You Haunt Me, Far From You and Chasing Brooklyn. Her middle grade debut, It's Raining Cupcakes, was published by Aladdin in 2010.
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Yuko Taniguchi |
Yuko Taniguchi was born in Yokohama, Japan. At the age of fifteen, she came
to the United States and attended high school in Maryland. She earned her
undergraduate degree at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's
University and her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota. Her first
volume of poetry, Foreign Wife Elegy, was published by Coffee House Press
in 2004.
Her first novel, The Ocean in the Closet, was published by Coffee House
Press in spring 2007. Some of her awards include the McKnight Artist
Fellowships for Writers, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant,
Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Assistance Fellowship.
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Kristen
Tracy |
Kristen Tracy's first novel for young adults was Lost It. Her new young adult novel, A Field Guide for Heartbreakers, will be published by Hyperion in summer 2010. Her first middle-grade novel, Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus, was released in Summer 2009 from Delacorte Books for Young Readers, and her second middle grade, The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter, will be published by Delacorte in fall 2010.
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Coert
Voorhees |
Coert Voorhees
is a graduate of Middlebury College and received an MFA in Fiction from the University of Houston. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in the translation of Chilean theatre, and his screenplays have advanced in various national competitions including winners at the Telluride IndieFest and PAGE International Screenwriting Awards. His debut novel, The Brothers Torres, was named one of 2009’s Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. His second novel, The Artist, is forthcoming in early 2011, to be followed in 2012 by a third, Annie Fleet and the Golden Jaguar. Coert is the creator of the animated educational series Grammaropolis (www.grammaropolis.com). He is currently Visiting Writer in Residence as the Parks Fellow at Rice University, and he enjoys living in Houston with his wife, Molly, and their two children, Dayton and Annie.
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Dan
Wells |
Dan Wells has a Bachelors in English from Brigham Young University where he was the editor of the Leading Edge Magazine. His first novel, I Am Not a Serial Killer, will be published in spring 2009 by Headline in the UK, Piper in Germany, and Tor in the US. |

Allison Whittenberg |
A Philadelphia native and a Virgo, Allison Whittenberg studied dance for years before switching to writing. She has a MA in English from the University of Wisconsin and enjoys traveling to places like the Caribbean and Russia. She is the author of the middle grade novels, Sweet Thang and Hollywood and Maine, and the young adult novels Life is Fine, and the forthcoming Tutored, all from Delacorte. |

Brian
Yansky |
Brian Yansky lives in Austin, Texas. He has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and teaches writing at Austin Community College. His latest YA novel, Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences, is forthcoming from Candlewick. He's the author of two previous YA novels: Wonders of the World and My Road Trip to The Pretty Girl Capital of the World. He also writes stories and novels for adults.
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Elizabeth
Zechel |
Elizabeth Zechel is an artist, illustrator, writer, and teacher. She received her B.A. from The Art Institute of Chicago and her M.F.A. from Pratt Institute. She has illustrated and written numerous children's books including covers of several poets' books and various literary journals and periodicals. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Visit Elizabeth's portfolio.
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