Francesca Lia Block was born in Los Angeles, California on December 3, 1962. She graduated from the University of California Berkeley and wrote her first book, Weetzie Bat, while a student there. It was published in 1989. Her other young adult works include Baby Be-Bop, Violet and Claire, How to (Un)cage a Girl, and The Waters and the Wild. She is also the author of the Weetzie Bat series. She has won several awards including the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Library Association in 2005 and the Phoenix Award.
Emma Donoghue was born on October 24, 1969 in Dublin, Ireland. She received her BA degree from the University College Dublin and PhD in English from University of Cambridge. Her first novel was Stir Fry and it was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 1994. Her next novel was Hood which won the 1997 American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature. Her novel Slammerkin was a finalist in the 2001 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction. The Sealed Letter, published in 2008, was her latest work of historical fiction. It is based on the Codrington Affair - which was a divorce case that captivated Britain in 1864. This work was the joint winner of… the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. She continued writing several award winning novels including the Room which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and on September 7, 2010 it made the short list. Her title Frog Music made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2014.
EDITH PATTOU is the author of East, and the two novels in the Songs of Eirren sequence: Hero's Song and Fire Arrow, a Booklist Top Ten Fantasy Novel of the Year, as well as Mrs. Spitzer's Garden, a picture book illustrated by Tricia Tusa. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.RON KOERTGE has written many highly acclaimed books for young readers, including Stoner Spaz, Margaux with an X, The Brimstone Journals, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, and Where the Kissing Never Stops. He lives in South Pasadena, California.