A former fashion editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Roberts is an artist, illustrator, photographer, and stylist whose work also appears in Tatler, Italian Vogue, and other international publications.

Jodi Rodgers is a qualified sexologist, counsellor, and special-education teacher with 30 years’ experience working within the education, disability, and sexuality fields. She is featured as the relationship specialist on Love on the Spectrum, Netflix’s hit docuseries that follows autistic people on their search for love. With her unique combination of qualifications and experience, Jodi has developed counseling and training programs for neurologically diverse individuals and their support networks. Her private practice, Birds and Bees, helps neurodivergent people learn about the complex areas of sexuality and relationships and, even more fundamentally, how to create love and connection.

A novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, Rudnick has written three books and frequently writes for The New Yorker. His articles and essays have also appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Spy. His screenplays include InandOut and Addams Family Values, and his plays include I Hate Hamlet. Using the pseudonym Libby Gelman-Waxner, Rudnick wrote film criticism for Premiere magazine.

Katheryn Russell-Brown is a children’s book author, Professor of Law, and Director of the Race and Crime Center for Justice at the University of Florida. She is the author of the picture book biographies Little Melba and Her Big Trombone, illustrated by Frank Morrison, which received the Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration, the Eureka! Honor Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature; A Voice Named Aretha, illustrated by Laura Freeman, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Brown Bookshelf; and She Was the First! The Trailblazing Life of Shirley Chisholm, illustrated by Eric Velasquez, which won the 2021 NAACP Image Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and The Chicago Public Library, and included in the Rise: A Feminist Book Project List. Katheryn was born in New York City and grew up in Oakland, California. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

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Geo Rutherford is an artist, professor, and TikTok sensation who is known for her work educating viewers on the science of hydrology.

Aminah Mae Safi is the author of four novels, including Tell Me How You Really Feel (Feiwel & Friends) and the forthcoming Travelers Along the Way: a Robin Hood Remix (Feiwel & Friends, 2022). She’s an erstwhile art historian, a fan of Cholula on popcorn, and an un-ironic lover of the Fast and the Furious franchise. Her writing has been featured on Bustle and Salon and her award-winning short stories can be found in Fresh Ink (Crown Books) and the forthcoming Freshman Orientation (Candlewick Press, 2023).

Isaiah Stephens is a freelance illustrator and animator located in Lowell, MA. He studied Media Arts and Animation at the New England Institute of Art, and has illustrated book jackets for the Italian translation of The Hunger Games, the novel The Devil Came East, and others.

Melanie Sumrow received her undergraduate degree in Religious Studies and has maintained a long-term interest in studying social issues. She also holds a Juris Doctorate and has practiced both criminal and civil law for over sixteen years, with many of the criminal cases involving teenagers.

Sarah Stewart Taylor is a fiction writer and journalist who lives with her family on a farm in Vermont; her published mysteries include the Maggie d’Arcy series, starting with The Mountains Wild, the Sweeney St. George mystery series (the first book in the series, O’ Artful Death, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel), The Expeditioners series of adventure novels for middle grade readers, and Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, a graphic novel for younger readers, which was nominated for an Eisner Award.

Leah Tinari is a widely exhibited New York based artist. Since graduating from RISD in 1998, Tinari has documented her life and friends through painting the capture the energy and exuberance of her surroundings.

Phuc Tran is a tattoo artist and co-owner of Tsunami Tattoo in Portland, Maine, where he also teaches Latin at Waynflete School. He has taught Latin, Greek, German, and Sanskrit at independent schools in New York and Maine and is a former instructor at Brooklyn College's Summer Latin Institute. See his TEDx talk on “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive” here. His first book, Sigh, Gone, is the winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award & 2020 New England Book Award.

Allison Varnes taught English in special education for eight years, and once had to convince administrators that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was not an actual endorsement of witchcraft. She is currently a Ph.D. student in English Education at The University of Tennessee, where she also supervises beginning English teachers during their internship year.

Rona Wang is currently a math major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For her short stories, she has been named a HerCampus 22 Under 22 and nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. She is originally from Portland, Oregon, and as a second-generation Chinese American she loves to write stories that reflect the Asian American experience. You Had Me at Hello World is her debut YA novel.

The Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock serves as the Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta. He also has served at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church of Birmingham, the Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York City, and Baltimore’s Douglas Memorial Community Church. The Rev. Dr. Warnock holds degrees from Morehouse College and Union Theological Seminary, and is the author of The Divided Mind of the Black Church. In January 2021, Dr. Warnock became Georgia's first Black senator.

Janelle Washington is a self-taught papercut artist who discovered her passion for the art form after graduating with a BFA in Fashion Design and working as a children's wear designer for 12 years. Her work explores Black culture and themes related to history, identity, family, and feminine beauty. All her papercuts and silhouettes are created using an Exacto knife and a single piece of paper. She then incorporates colorful tissue paper, thread, and gold leaf to add color and dimension to her designs. West African Adinkra symbols in her artwork convey traditional wisdom.

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Janelle’s work has been exhibited at the National Children's Hospital, Martha Spak Gallery in Washington, DC, the National Institute of Health Clinical Center inBethesda, MD, and The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, VA, among many others. She has commissioned silhouettes housed at the SmithsonianNational Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and created art installations for the historic St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA.Her work has been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, and Country Living magazine. She is a member of The Guild of American Papercutters, where she served on the board, the Book/PrintArtist/Scholar of Color Collective,Art Impact USA, and Ikouii.

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Janelle lives and works in Virginia with her husband, where she enjoys reading science fiction books from the library and researching new ideas for papercuts.

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Tony Weaver, Jr. is founder and CEO of Weird Enough Productions, a new media production company dedicated to creating positive media images of black men and other minority groups, and the creator of the educational webcomic The UnCommons, whose curriculum is used by over 40,000 students per month. Tony has been the recipient of the Leadership Prize and the Black Excellence Award, participated in the NBCUniversal Fellowship Program and the Peace First Fellowship, is a TEDx speaker, and was one of Forbes’ 2018 “30 Under 30” honorees—the first comic book writer to ever make the list.

Molly Webster, a graduate of NYU’s Science Writing Program and an award-winning journalist, is a Senior Correspondent at WNYC’s Radiolab. She is an accomplished writer having contributed to Scientific American, National Geographic Adventure, and Wired. Most recently she presented a TED Talk about her research on sex chromosomes.

Maya Wei-Haas is an award-winning reporter at National Geographic. She writes about all things science and has a particular affection for rocks and reactions. Maya pursued a bachelor's in geology at Smith College and then won an NSF fellowship to support her Ph.D. work in Earth Science at the Ohio State University. She's traveled the world in the name of science, scooping ice melt from the top of Antarctic glaciers and hauling up sediments from Svalbard lakes. She made the jump to journalism with the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. Now she's working to bring these types of adventures—and the science that surrounds us—to all. In 2019, she was honored with AGU's David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism for her story about the discovery of a submarine volcano's birth. In addition to National Geographic, her work has appeared at Smithsonian.com and EOS. She's working on a forthcoming children's book about the amazing things that rocks can reveal with Phaidon Press.

Sean Fay Wolfe is a seventeen-year-old Eagle Scout and writing prodigy. He is the author of the Minecraft fan fiction series The Elementia Chronicles (HarperCollins).

Kelvin Wong was featured on Love on the Spectrum, Netflix’s hit docuseries that follows autistic people on their search for love, where he met Jodi Rodgers, the relationship specialist who consulted with the show’s participants about the potential romantic partners they were meeting. A talented illustrator,  Kelvin collaborated with Jodi Rodgers on the graphic novel, LET’S MEET.

Jenna Yoon is a debut author and has spent equal amounts of time living in Korea and the U.S. She holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College, and a MA in Korean Art History from Ewha Woman’s University. Lia Park and the Missing Jewel is her middle grade debut.

Katie Zhao is the author of the middle grade book The Dragon Warrior and the young adult novel How We Fall Apart (Bloomsbury).

Sara grew up building forts in the woods around her Wisconsin home. When she wasn’t in a fort reading, she was probably at the library, checking out more books. She still loves to read, dream, and write outdoors or in secret hideaways.

The author of several forthcoming picture books, Sara loves going on adventures with her family. Whether she is hiking a glacier, foraging along a mountain path, or tending her garden, she is always thinking about story.

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Todd Boss is an author, installation artist, inventor, librettist, podcaster, and film producer in Minneapolis. His fourth poetry collection from W. W. Norton & Co. is SOMEDAY THE PLAN OF A TOWN. His lyrics have been performed at Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. His work has been recognized with Grammy nominations, Emmy awards, and by the National Book Foundation. Todd is the founding Artistic Director of Motionpoems, a production company that has turned more than 150 contemporary poems into short films. His podcast,  There’s a Poem in That, launched in 2023. 

In 2018, Todd sold all his possessions and circled the globe in a series of 30+ house-sits. He is the author of THE BOY WHO SAID WOW.

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Even at a young age, NYT best-selling Tim Bowers' artwork reflected a strong sense of humor and an interest in animals. Prior to illustrating children's books, Tim worked as an artist for Hallmark Cards, where he helped launch the popular Shoebox Greetings card line. Bowers has garnered various awards including the Chicago Public Library's "Best of the Best" list and several Junior Library Guild selections. Tim's artwork has been included in the Society of Illustrators Annual Art Exhibition and the S.I. Humor Exhibition, as well as featured in children's magazines, used on a wide variety of products, and appeared on hundreds of greeting cards. Bowers is the creator of Uke-n-Draw, a new program that introduces storytelling to children through music and art. Tim and his wife live in central Ohio.

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Arree loves storytelling and art, and pursued his love of art at Art Center College of Design. He has worked in the Entertainment Industry as a Concept Artist and Art Director. In 2010, Arree won first place at the SCBWI Western Washington Portfolio show launching his passion for children’s books. 

Arree continues to work on picture book stories and has a middle-grade novel encompassing the Immigrant experience releasing soon. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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