Karen S. Hesse is an American author of children's literature and literature for young adults, often with historical settings. She won the Newbery Medal for Out of the Dust (1997).
Katrina Elizabeth DiCamillo is an American children's fiction author. She has published over 25 novels, including Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician's Elephant, the Mercy Watson series, and Flora & Ulysses. Her books have sold around 37 million copies. Four have been developed into films and two have been adapted into musical settings. Her works have won various awards; The Tale of Despereaux and Flora & Ulysses won the Newbery Medal, making DiCamillo one of six authors to have won two Newbery Medals.
Lesléa Newman is an American author, editor, and feminist. Four of her young adult novels have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, making her one of the most celebrated authors in the category.
Megan Jo McDonald is an American children's literature author. Her most popular works is the series of books which concern a third grade girl named Judy Moody. McDonald has also written many picture books for younger children and continues to write. Her most recent work was the Julie Albright series of books for American Girl.
Nora Raleigh Baskin is an American author of books for children and young adults.
Louise Hawes is an American academic and author of more than a dozen novels and several short story collections. She has served as Writer in Residence at the University of New Mexico and The Women's University of Mississippi, and as a John Grisham Visiting Writer at the University of Mississippi. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of South Florida, Staten Island College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Meredith College, and Duke University.
Jon J Muth is an American writer and illustrator of children's books as well as graphic novels and comic books.
Sharon Mills Draper is an American children's writer, professional educator, and the 1997 National Teacher of the Year. She is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for books about the young and adolescent African-American experience. She is known for her Hazelwood and Jericho series, Copper Sun,Double Dutch, Out of My Mind and Romiette and Julio.
Nikki Grimes is an American author of books written for children and young adults, as well as a poet and journalist.
The E.B. White Read Aloud Award was established in 2004 by The Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC) to honor books that its membership felt embodied the universal read aloud standards that were created by the work of the author E.B. White.
George Ancona was an American photo essayist and creator of photo-illustrated children's picture books. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the son of immigrants from Mexico. He is renowned for creating vivid photo essays that invite children to immerse themselves in new places and cultures, to appreciate the work of everyday life and to accept themselves as well as others. His intimate portraits and straightforward writings celebrate his own Mexican heritage and depression-era upbringing in Brooklyn, NY. Trained as an artist and graphic designer, he entered the children's book field initially as a photographer, and over the past fifty years has authored, photographed and designed over one hundred books that are beloved by children and librarians throughout the Americas.
William Kent Krueger is an American novelist and crime writer, best known for his series of novels featuring Cork O'Connor, which are set mainly in Minnesota. In 2005 and 2006, he won back-to-back Anthony Awards for best novel. In 2014, his stand-alone book Ordinary Grace won the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 2013. In 2019, This Tender Land was a on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly six months.
Gerald Andrews Hausman is a storyteller and award-winning author of books about Native America, animals, mythology, and West Indian culture. Hausman has published over seventy books for both children and adults.
Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet and author of many award-winning books for children, young adults and adults. Most of Engle's stories are written in verse and are a reflection of her Cuban heritage and her deep appreciation and knowledge of nature. She became the first Latino awarded a Newbery Honor in 2009 for The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom. She was selected by the Poetry Foundation to serve from 2017–2019 as the sixth Young People's Poet Laureate. On October 9, 2018, Margarita Engle was announced the winner of the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. She was nominated by 2019 NSK Prize jury member Lilliam Rivera.
Greg Neri is an American author and is known for his work in young adult fiction. He has written books in free verse and novelistic prose, as well as graphic novels. Neri has received awards from the American Library Association, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the International Reading Association.
Jon Klassen is a Canadian writer and illustrator of children's books and an animator. He won both the American Caldecott Medal and the British Kate Greenaway Medal for children's book illustration, recognizing the 2012 picture book This Is Not My Hat, which he also wrote. He is the first person to win both awards for the same work.
Eugene Yelchin is a Russian-American artist best known as an illustrator and writer of books for children.
Gary Ferguson is an American writer. Ferguson is the author of more than 20 nonfiction books. His books have won awards from the Society of American Travel Writers, the High Plains Book Festival, and the Montana Book Award committee. His book Hawks Rest was the first book to be named Book of the Year by both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and the Mountains and Plains booksellers association.
Katherine Rundell is an English author and academic. She is the author of Rooftoppers, which in 2015 won both the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and has appeared as an expert guest on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, Poetry Please, and Seriously.... and Private Passions.
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
