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Authors & Illustrators



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Andrea Zuill

Andrea was born in the agricultural town of Bakersfield, CA and moved to the San Diego area when she married. For 20 years she owned and ran a sign and graphics company. At the same time Andrea created oil paintings. She’s still painting and her work shows in galleries in California, Texas and New York. Andrea’s work has exhibited in the San Diego Museum of Art and the Brand Library gallery, where she won the Disney Imagineering award. In about 2006 she started a series of art prints which portrayed funny and somewhat cranky characters that she sells on Etsy (the online handmade store) and at art festivals. Andrea's blog has given her a forum where she can exercise her funny bone. Besides writing articles about crafting, she writes and illustrates some very goofy stories. With everything she has learned from her blog, and her love of creating silly artwork, Andrea knew that she wanted to be involved in children’s books. A member of the SCBWI, she won the 2010 SCBWI Mentorship award. Andrea Zuil is the 2013 Golden Gate Portfolio Award winner.
zuill.us/andreablog/
www.zuill.us/illustration/


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Barbara Younger

Barbara Younger is the author of twenty books for children and adults, including Purple Mountain Majesties: The Story of Katharine Lee Bates and “America the Beautiful,” a Junior Library Guild Selection. Along with her writing, she teaches classes in English composition and children’s literature at local colleges. Barbara has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, a library degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, and an undergraduate degree in history and French from Duke University. She shares an old yellow house in Hillsborough, North Carolina with her husband, cat, and collections of dolls, buttons, bookmarks, and antique toys.
barbarakyounger.com
Blog: http://friendfortheride.com
twitter.com/barbarayounger 
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Sharry Wright
Before Sharry Wright earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in their Writing For Children and Young Adults program, she worked as a scrimshander, a window dresser, a film location scout and a trompe l’oeil artist. She co-founded Inkspell Writers, offering classes and workshops in writing Middle Grade and Young Adult fiction in the Bay Area, has organized a number of writing retreats and conferences and is delighted to work as a moderator for mother daughter book clubs. Her essay, “Gratitude From City Mouse” is published in Hunger Mountain’s The Landscape of Literature issue. (Fall 2012) She is currently working on her third novel, a historical YA adventure set on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Sharry lives in San Francisco and when she’s not writing, teaching or talking about books, she’s out wandering with her dog in North Beach and enjoying café society. Sharry blogs at Kissing The Earth. You can find her on Facebook and at smithwright.blogspot.com


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Wendy Wahman
Wendy Wahman is the author/illustrator of DON’T LICK THE DOG: MAKING FRIENDS WITH DOGS and A CAT LIKE THAT, and illustrator of SNOWBOY 1, 2, 3, written by Joe Wahman. DON’T LICK THE DOG was selected as a 2010 Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year, starred for Outstanding Merit and accepted to the Society of Illustrators Original Art show. Her A CAT LIKE THAT book trailer was selected from over 7,000 entries to be in catvidfest 2013, Walker Art Center. www.walkerart.org/
Wendy’s editorial illustrations have appeared in major publications including Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Her favorite job-type job was working in the art department of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, until its print closure in 2009. Wendy and Joe live near Seattle with their two children, who look and act remarkably like standard poodles.   Website   Blog   Behance   Pinterest (to come)   Facebook   CafePress   Twitter


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Sarah Towle
Sarah Towle’s debut StoryApp, BEWARE MADAME LA GUILLOTINE, A REVOLUTIONARY TOUR OF PARIS, with murderess Charlotte Corday, launched in July 2011 to raves and went on to earn accolades from Apple, School Library Journal, Teachers With Apps, and the World Youth & Student Educational Travel Confederation. It was re-released as an interactive bookin February 2013 and is now available in iBookstores worldwide. Sarah’s second title, DECADE OF THE DEAD, a journey to Paris’ Napoleonic era in the company of a gravedigger, will follow in 2014. Published by Time Traveler Tours & Tales, Sarah’s concept represents a new model in digital publishing, combining the traditional power of storytelling with the latest in mobile technology to bring history to life. Sarah writes regularly on all things digital, on her website/blog as well as for O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing. She travels as a guest teacher and workshop facilitator in the US and Europe, and will join the faculty of Julie Hedlund’s Writer’s Renaissance in April. Sarah’s recent speaking engagements include TOC-Bologna, SCBWI-FR, and SCBWI-LA. She will be presenting in May 2014 at NE-SCBWI on harnessing the traditional power of narrative to create interactive apps and eBooks that educate, empower, and extend.


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Mima Tipper
Half-Greek-half-American, Mima Tipper and her writing reflect her heritage—a little bit old-country, a little bit rock and roll; one foot wandering through the dreamy realm of myths and faerie tales, the other running on the solid ground of fast-paced, contemporary story. She received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and recently two of her YA short stories appeared in online literary journals: Katherine Paterson Prize finalist “A Cut-Out Face” in Hunger Mountain’s The Art & Insanity of Creativity Issue (Fall, 2011) and “Waiting for Alice” in the premiere issue of Sucker Literary Magazine (Winter, 2012.) Beyond devoting most of her time to writing, Mima is a member of SCBWI, and is committed to promoting literacy and to supporting the writing community. Currently Mima lives in Vermont with her family; find her @meemtip on Twitter.


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Bridget Strevens-Marzo
Bridget Strevens-Marzo is an illustrator-author who combines her love of color, painting and play in creating books for younger children. She is sought out for her talent for inventing visual sub-stories, with warm, lively and original characters such as the little hippo in the award-winning international co-edition, Kiss, Kiss! (Little Hare/Egmont/ Simon & Schuster US) and her cast of animals in her French children songs and in Bridget's Book of Nursery Rhymes. She is also at home with both story and concept books. Her graphic The Big Book for Little Hands (Bayard/Tate Gallery UK/ Abrams US) was shortlisted for the British Book Design Award, and the most recent US/UK book she illustrated, Mini Racer (Bloomsbury), added another star to a good collection of reviews. Bridget also enjoys weaving her own stories and playful paths around pictures. She has learnt from working in an international children’s multimedia start-up and later for Bayard Press that working with a publishing team is like having a party with a purpose. She also enjoys sharing her work with young and old at book events and workshops across the world.
www.bridgetstrevens.com
bridgimage.blogspot.com



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Whitney Stewart
Whitney Stewart grew up in New England and graduated from Brown University. She published her first award-winning YA biography after interviewing the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, the subject of two of her books. For her next biographies, she trekked with Sir Edmund Hillary in the Everest region of Nepal; interviewed Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon, Burma; and traveled extensively in Asia to research the lives of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, and Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. She is the author of three middle-grade novels and multiple middle-grade nonfiction books, including a picture book about an unknown tale of Abraham Lincoln and Francis Bicknell Carpenter based on her family documents. Stewart lives in New Orleans. Find Whitney on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as well as www.whitneystewart.com
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is a Danish illustrator-author living in Paris. She writes in Danish, French and English and has always drawn and told stories. When she was a child, her actor-father read Hans Christian Andersen fairytales to her every night. Her first project to be published in 2015 is a reinterpretation of The Princess and the Pea. Her illustrations are infused with gentle humor, bright colors and a light line. Combining her interest in psychoanalysis with her love of literature, she received her Masters in Scandinavian literature from Paris-Sorbonne-IV. She teaches Danish at Sorbonne FC, at ENS and works for different French publishers as an illustrator and designer.  Drawings


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Jeanne B. de Sainte Marie
Jeanne B. de Sainte Marie is an illustrator and author. Her work is published in picture books, travel notebooks, children’s calendars and magazines. Jeanne’s watercolors are regularly exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic. In a recent foray into the digital world, she created hundreds of watercolor paintings to illustrate and animate an iPad poetry app. Jeanne hails from Michigan where she studied art and textile design. For years she created color and materials for the automotive industry in Detroit and then in Paris, where she settled.
www.jeannedesaintemarie.com


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Carmen Oliver
Carmen Oliver was born and raised in southern Manitoba, Canada, part of a larger region referred to as the Red River Valley, where lakes are plentiful and lands are fertile. She splits her time between living in Matlock, Canada and just outside of Austin, Texas with her loving husband, three beautiful kids and one scallywag dog. In 2003, she left behind a career as a programmer analyst to follow her dream of inspiring children with stories. Her published work has appeared in family and children’s magazines and a regional newspaper in Texas. She’s a children’s book junkie and still has one of her favorite books Sandman’s Stories of Twinkle Toes by Abbie Phillips Walker on her night table. Stories that her grandmother used to read to her before bedtime, and she looks forward to the day when her books are being shared the same way. When she’s not working on her own stories, she’s mentoring students with their writing and contributing to ReaderKidz, a website devoted to fostering a love of reading in kids, K-5. She’s also the former Assistant Regional Advisor for the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Please stop by and visit Carmen’s website at www.carmenoliver.com or her blog Following My Dreams…One Word at a Time carmenoliver.livejournal.com


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Anita Nolan
As a college freshman, Anita Nolan’s English professor suggested she major in English. She ignored his advice and graduated four years later from the Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Food Science.
She has worked in quality control and product development in a large commercial frozen foods bakery, as an editor for a food industry trade journal, started a gourmet-takeout shop, and sold real estate. Her voice is solidly middle grade (in spite of years of technical and business writing), but she’s dabbled in picture books and young adult as well.
A member of SCBWI, she was the executive editor of Sprouts, the magazine of the NJ SCBWI, for three years, and is a frequent speaker at writing conferences. She also conducts novel-writing and revision workshops at the Pearl S. Buck Writing Center.
www.anitanolan.com



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Susan McElroy Montanari
Susan McElroy Montanari spent the majority of her life on the sandy beaches and tidal creeks surrounding Savannah, Georgia. She has written numerous articles forlocal parenting magazines, and was a finalist in two categories for the 2010 Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in Children’s Literature in Connecticut: one for her picture book, My Dog’s A Chicken, and the other for her MG novel, The Day Sasquatch Ate My Journal. Susan’s hobbies include gardening, scuba diving, natural science, legend tripping, and cryptozoology. She has three daughters and one son-in-law, and currently resides in Norwalk, Connecticut, with her husband, one daughter, a turtle, and a cat named Tybee.



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Jess Metts

Jess Metts [a.k.a. Jess Irish] is an artist, design and writer living and working between the Catskill mountains and New York City. Having spent the last twenty years teaching and working in new media technologies, she was inspired to begin writing for children in 2013. She is currently an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and has also studied her craft at the Yale Writer's Workshop. She also has an MFA in Studio Art from University of California, Irvine, a post-baccalaurate degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Scripps College. She is a full-time faculty in the School of Art, Media & Technology at Parsons, The New School for Design, where she is fortunate to work and teach with creative humans of all stripes. 
Visit her online at: jessmetts.com, jessicairish.com and on twitter @jessmetts



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J.M. Lee

J. M. Lee studied theoretical linguistics and cinema at the University of Minnesota. He wanted to major in Shakespeare but that program hadn’t been developed yet; linguistics and cinema seemed like the next best bet. His written works focus on character-driven stories in nostalgic-fusion settings, always accompanied by a sharp sense of linguistic humor. As a freelance illustrator, Lee has worked on numerous digital- and traditional- medium projects and has had the honor of contributing to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwear. You can find him at: www.joeyverse.com
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Maria Lebedeva
Maria Lebedeva is an illustrator living and working in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Her love for drawing pictures and compiling books began at the age of two, and when she grew up she chose to study graphic design, followed by a postgraduate degree in illustration. Her work is primarily driven by the need to tell a good story, because we are inseparable from the stories we tell (and the ones we choose to keep secret). The stories that inspire her can be born from overheard conversations, the folklore associated with her Russian heritage, a passerby with a funny hat, the long tales her granny shared with her, or just things that came strolling into her mind all on their own. The stories take shape in picture books which she writes and illustrates, and in series of artworks which she regularly exhibits. She hopes that audiences will be encouraged to interpret her works, making the stories she tells their very own.
Maria's work can be found at www.marialebedeva.co.za.


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Jessica Lee Anderson
Jessica Lee Anderson is the author of Trudy (winner of the 2005 Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature), Border Crossing (Quick Picks Nomination), as well as Calli (2013 Rainbow List Final Nomination). She’s published several nonfiction readers, as well as fiction and nonfiction for a variety of magazines including Highlights for Children. Jessica graduated from Hollins University with a Master of Arts in Children's Literature, and instructed at the Institute of Children's Literature for five years before teaching Children’s Literature at St. Edward's University. She is a member of The Texas Sweethearts & Scoundrels and hopes to be more sweetheart than scoundrel (texassweethearts.com).  Jessica is also a member of SCBWI and the Writers’ League of Texas.  She lives near Austin, Texas with her husband, daughter, and two crazy dogs.  For more information, visit www.jessicaleeanderson.com
She’s on Facebook:  www.facebook.com/jessicaleeanderson
and Twitter:  www.twitter.com/jessleeanderson


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Photo credit: Simon Peterson
Kathryn Kramer
Kathryn Kramer was born in Annapolis, Maryland and grew up there and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since then she has lived all over the U.S. and in several foreign countries; she now lives in Vermont, where she teaches writing and literature at Middlebury College. She has published several novels for adults (A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space, Rattlesnake Farming, and Sweet Water) and is completing a memoir about her education, entitled Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books, arising out of her experience growing up as a faculty child at St. John’s College and her thinking about what people really learn in school besides the subjects they’re taught. She’s published short fiction, non-fiction, and book reviews and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Vermont Arts Council, among others. She teaches English to migrant workers in Vermont and with a Middlebury student has written a textbook called Welcome to Vermont: English for Working and Living (free to download and use but not resell from www.osymigrant.org)


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Ann Jacobus

Ann Jacobus lived for almost two decades in Europe and the Middle East and returned to the US in ‘09. Her passion for stories, however, was nurtured by elementary school librarians in Little Rock, Arkansas. She graduated with honors from Dartmouth College, and earned an MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she was awarded the Jane Resh Thomas Scholarship. Her debut YA thriller  Romancing the Dark in the City of Light, will be published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan in fall 2015. She also writes middle grade fiction and teaches writing for children. Ann’s short fiction, essays, and poetry have been published in anthologies, journals and magazines. She blogs regularly at Readerkidz.com. She lives with her family and dog, Louie, in San Francisco.
More at www.annjacobus.com, fearlessfifteeners.wordpress.com 
and www.readerkidz.com


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Amy Huntington
Amy Huntington began painting in kindergarten, using the ends of her pigtails for brushes. She drew castles, bicycles, sleds cats, and her siblings with the chicken pox.
In summer she wrote poems while tucked in the branches of her favorite tree.
After college she settled in Vermont, exhibiting her paintings in various New England galleries. As a new mother she fell in love with picture books, and has never looked back. She fills lots of sketchbooks and writes lots of words. Some turn into picture books. Her first picture book, One Monday, Orchard/Scholastic, 2001, had both Amy’s words and her art. She has since illustrated numerous books including Grandma Drove the Garbage Truck, (by Katie Clark,) Down East Books. Amy lives with her husband, a cat, hens and two sheep in an old Vermont farmhouse that needs lots of care. Member SCBWI, Authors Guild and Picture Book Artists Association.
www.amyhuntington.com
amyhuntington.wordpress.com
amysfieldnotes.wordpress.com
amybluecrow (instagram)
www.facebook.com/amyhuntingtonillustrator


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Maureen Hourihan
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Maureen Hourihan has lived in Brewster since 1975. She’s held many jobs, a favorite teaching 4th grade in Truro, where a love of middle grade literature deepened and a love of writing took flight. Before long, she’d penned a magazine column called Vintage, non-fiction articles, and various short stories. Slow Train Coming, a humorous play about a daughter whose father battles Alzheimer’s, has been staged many times on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. Her middle grade novel, My Stupendous Fall from Grace, won the Marion Dane Bauer Award at Vermont College where she earned her MFA in Writing for Children.  In 2001, she sailed over 4,000 miles with her husband and son, a trip that inspired a middle grade work-in-progress, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, the story of two brothers battling the elements and each other in an attempt to deliver a sailboat to their dying dad. Maureen maintains her bond with VCFA as a graduate assistant, a reader for Hunger Mountain and the Katherine Patterson Prize, and a member of an on-line critique group of grads. She’s also an active member of SCBWI. Maureen is usually writing, but still teaches, tutors, and makes whimsical vintage jewelry. In her free time, she holes up with good books, creates unnecessarily complicated cakes, and swims in Cape Cod Bay. She’s still an expert daydreamer.
www.maureenhourihan.com
maureenhourihan@hotmail.com


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Julie Hedlund

Julie Hedlund is a children’s author and freelance writer. Her book, A TROOP IS A GROUP OF MONKEYS, was released as an interactive storybook app for the iPad in February 2013 by Little Bahalia Publishing. Two additional titles in the series are scheduled for later this year. Julie is the creator of Julie Hedlund’s Template for Storybook App Proposals and the founder and host of the 12 x 12 picture book writing challenge, with 475 members. She is a monthly contributor on Katie Davis’ Brain Burps About Books children’s literature podcast, a contributing editor on the subject of 21st century publishing for Children’s Book Insider, and a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers (SCBWI), the Children’s Book Hub, and the Association of Writers and Writing Professionals. She has been a speaker at AWP, O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing, and SCBWI events.
Website: www.juliehedlund.com
Blog: www.juliehedlund.com/blog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/JulieFHedlund
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JulieFHedlund
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/profile
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel
Pinterest: pinterest.com/juliehedlund/
Google+: plus.google.com




Jacqui Hazell
Jacqui Hazell was born and brought up in Hampshire, England, where there was a foxhole at the end of her garden. It led to a wild, overgrown orchard and Jacqui thinks this early joy in trespassing contributed to her ongoing love of entering other unknown worlds. Art was her first chosen escape from the mundanity of suburbia. She studied at Winchester College of Art and Nottingham before moving to London where she spent a miserable month working as a secretary at Buckingham Palace.  There then followed work as a greetings cards designer, journalist and magazine editor. Her short stories have been published in various anthologies and shortlisted for the Jane Austen Award. She has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. She writes novels, short stories and children's fiction. She lives in London with her family and Basil the dog-that-looks-like-a-fox. 
twitter.com/jaqhazell


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Meghan Hill
Meghan M. Hill wrote her first book in First Grade when she was supposed to be doing math. In high school, she wrote a short children’s play starring the same Fin who appears in The Boy Who Would Be Claus in the back pages of her Chemistry binder. At Temple Law School in Philadelphia, she scribbled the beginnings of The Boy Who Would Be Claus in the margins of her Torts notes. But it wasn’t until years later, after losing her mother to breast cancer in 2011 that Meghan finally wrote the book, very likely because of something her mom said to her just days before she passed away. Her mom said, “It all goes so fast, Sweetie. You’ve got to do what you love.” For Meghan, doing what she loved meant being a wife and mom, and it also meant writing. And the story that she wanted to write, more than any other, was Nicholas. Meghan grew up loving Christmas and daydreaming about Santa Claus’s North Pole. She read everything about St. Nicholas she could find. Growing up didn’t diminish her fascination one bit. In fact, her belief in Christmas miracles grew with each passing year. Meghan, her husband and their children currently reside in Pennsylvania where Meghan spends many hours reading to the kids, and where her husband spends many hours reading to Meghan.
twitter.com/meghanmhill
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Cece Hall
Cece Hall has been a writer of one sort or another for most of her life.  As a child she wrote and illustrated stories -- always with a house, a horse and a girl with a slightly oversized head. She earned her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in her 20s and has worked in the fields of journalism, advertising and corporate communications ever since.  Always a gardener, it was when she noticed that she'd filled her small yard in Portland, Oregon with lavender that she realized what she really wanted to be was a lavender farmer.  So she and her husband bought a dilapidated 1892 farm house outside the city with flapping plastic for walls and a ping pong table in the kitchen.  Their friends shook their heads with disbelief (and really, just plain pity), but Cece held fast to her vision of what it could be and took comfort in the clawfooted bathtub with a view towards the coastal mountain range. She would need those baths!  Within three years she was hosting the first Portland lavender festival and watching hundreds of visitors trip happily through her fields.  But lately the kernel for another idea has begun to germinate. She is a writer, after all. So this new chapter is about the stories of this farm and, more specifically, Cece's latest endeavor growing flax to spin into linen.  And if a girl with a slightly oversized head should pop up along the way, she should feel perfectly at home. lillalavender.com/


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Sandra Guy
Sandra Guy is a prize-winning poet and writer of articles, stories, short films and monologues but her special interest is in teen fiction which she uses to explore ideas of identity, myth, story, space and time. Her writing has appeared in books and magazines in the UK, France and the United States. After graduating with a degree in English from Bristol University, Sandra worked in advertising, ran a theatre production company, and worked with young homeless people. She has led writing workshops in Greece, read tarot cards in Rome and taught English in Paris. When not involved in any of the above, Sandra is busy studying Traditional Chinese Medicine with a view to specializing in acupuncture. She lives in Amsterdam with her son and two cats. You can check out her writing at: www.sandraguy.com.
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Hannah R. Goodman

Hannah R. Goodman is the founder and editor of SUCKER LITERARY, which publishes emerging writers of YA fiction. She has a Master’s degree in school counseling and owns The Write Touch, a tutoring, editing, and consulting company. She earned an MFA in Writing for Young People at Pine Manor College’s Solstice Program in Creative Writing. She’s published young adult short stories on Amazon’s Shorts, in an anthology entitled Bound Is The Bewitching Lilith, and in the journal Balancing The Tides. She also has written columns for The Jewish Voice & Herald.Twitter @hannahrgoodman 
or @suckerlitmag 
or on her blog Writerwoman


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Laura Gehl
Laura Gehl started her writing career in the magazine world. She still writes about science and medical topics for a variety of child and adult periodicals, including a monthly column “Ask Dr. Cyborg” for Odyssey Magazine. Laura’s picture books include ONE BIG PAIR OF UNDERWEAR (September 2014, Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster), AND THEN ANOTHER SHEEP TURNED UP (February 2015, Kar Ben/Lerner) and HARE AND TORTOISE RACE ACROSS ISRAEL (February 2015, Kar Ben/Lerner). Her first two books in the series staring PEEP AND EGG will hatch in 2016 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux/Macmillan). Laura’s best ideas come from her four young kids, who also give her an excuse to spend lots of time reading children’s books. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. www.lauragehl.com


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C.M. Fleming

C.M. (Connie) Fleming worked for Georgia Bureau of Investigation as a fingerprint technician and later a statistical crime analyst. She left all that for a life in the spotlight. She found a colorful partner and took her act, ventriloquism act that is, on the road. Not only does she write books for children, young adults and adults, she writes her own comedy skits and teaches "Writing for Smarties" to young writers. Her novel, COWGIRLS, ALIEN ENCOUNTERS & OTHER GOVERNMENT SECRETS, brings a fresh voice to the collection of stories of those who have witnessed curious and unaccounted-for activity in the desert. cmfleming.com



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Candy Dahl
Candy Dahl loves books and storytelling. A former teacher/librarian, she began her pursuit of a writing career by completing the Writing for Children Course of the Institute of Children's Literature and becoming an active member in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. In 2007, she received her MFA degree in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Candy loves discovering little known historical events and using them to launch her middle grade and young adult novels. In 2002, her middle grade novel, Emma and the Civil Warrior, was one of three finalists for the Children’s Book of the Year of the Southeastern Booksellers Association and one of three finalists for the Juvenile Fiction Book of the Independent Publishers Association (a national competition). 
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Doug Cushman
Since 1978 Doug Cushman has illustrated over 125 children's books, thirty or so of which he wrote as well. Among his many honors he has gained a place on the New York Times Children's Best Sellers list and on the 2003 Children's Literature Choice list. The first book of his popular beginning reader series featuring Aunt Eater was a Reading Rainbow Book. He has received a National Cartoonist's Society Reuben Award for Book Illustration, the 2004 Christopher Award for his book illustrations, a 2007 and 2010 Maryland Blue Crab Award and the 2009 California Young Readers Medal. He illustrated the best selling "Can't Do" series, including What Dads Can't Do and What Moms Can't Do for Simon and Schuster. His recent titles include Halloween Good Night and Christmas Eve Good Night, (which received a starred review from Kirkus). His first book of poems, Pigmares, came out with Charlesbridge in 2012. 2014 sees Pumpkin Time! (illustrated by Doug just in time for Thanksgiving) from Sourcebooks. He has displayed his original art in France, Romania and the USA, including the prestigious Original Art, the annual children's book art show at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. He is fan of mystery novels and plays slide guitar horribly. He enjoys cooking, traveling, eating and absorbing French culture and good wine-even designing a wine label for a Burgundy wine maker-in his new home in Paris, France.
www.doug-cushman.com
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Claudia Classon
Claudia Classon has worked on and off in publishing since college and is currently employed at Princeton University Press. She received her Masters in Writing in 2005 from Manhattanville College, and was an editor of their literary journal Inkwell for two years. Claudia has been a member of SCBWI for several years, both in the U.S. and in France, where she lived from 2005-2008. She also reports on books for a French publisher seeking to buy YA books for the French market. Her non-literary interests include choral singing and tree hugging. wordprowler.blogspot.com


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Mary Dodson Wade does not remember learning to read, but she spent her childhood with her nose in a book – even learning to swim that way! It is only natural that she earned a master’s degree in Library Science and spent twenty-five wonderful years among books and children in elementary school libraries in Arkansas, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Texas.
Along the way, she absorbed interesting information and indulged her love of history, using that to publish over fifty books of nonfiction, many of them biographies related to Texas history. Her books have been honored by Western Writers of America, The International Librarians Association, and The Parent Council. She maintains membership in the Texas Library Association, Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, the Texas State Historical Association, as well as local museums in Texas and in Hawaii where her grandchildren live.
She and her engineer husband live in Houston, Texas. His travel to teach courses in many parts of the globe has given her the opportunity to talk to teachers and children in other countries about writing, the latest being a 2012 trip to Sumatra. Her book No Year of the Cat, a beautifully illustrated Chinese folktale she found in Taipei, explains why there is no cat in the Chinese zodiac. Her current focus is on picture books, easy readers, and middle grade fiction. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators has had an enormous impact on her career as a writer. She is a founding member of the Houston chapter and served ten years as Regional Advisor. Much more information can be found at her website
www.marydwade.com


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Melissa Buron
Melissa Buron was born in Tennessee but grew-up in Houston, Texas. She spent her summers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with her grandparents and the school year hiding out in the public library. After finishing her bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Medieval European History, she earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in young adult literature. For the past eighteen years Melissa has worked as a librarian and teacher for young people in Africa, Europe and the United States. She is writing a gothic romance set in France, a middle grade paranormal and a basketful of short stories. You can find her at her blog, www.melissaburon.com, or on Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Twitter.
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Janine Burgan

Janine Burgan loves words. She is happiest when putting them to paper, shaping them into stories for children so they sing off the page. Her love of words and ideas extends to her job as a teacher. She has worked with students of all levels, from kindergarten to college, teaching them to write. When not teaching or writing, Janine loves to travel. She's been across the United States, England, Central America, and New Zealand. She has also explored Japan, where she lived for two years, and Australia, the homeland of her piano-playing husband. Currently settled in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Janine also enjoys knitting, cooking, eating, reading, and chasing her family's seven hens around the yard. She is a member of SCBWI and MLA. You can find her on Facebook and writing for her critique group's blog: www.firstnovelsclub.com.


PA

Pen Avey
Pen Avey loves thinking creatively and channels this passion into her writing and illustrating. Her true calling is comedy, and over the past few years Pen has written numerous scripts ranging from screenplays to sitcom. Her other interests include science and technology - Pen has qualifications in engineering and is keen on finding out about new inventions and discoveries. She currently lives in Norfolk, England and is married with two daughters and a granddaughter. You can follow her at HeadToTable.wordpress.com and @PenAvey






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© 2014 Erzsi Deàk/Hen&ink

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