J. ANDERSON COATS is the author of The Wicked and the Just, a 2013 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick and the winner of the 2013 Washington State Book Award for Young Adults. She lives near Puget Sound.
ANDREA CREMER is the New York Times and international best-selling author of the Nightshade series and The Inventor’s Secret. Andrea has always loved writing, but it took a horse and a broken foot to prompt her to finally write the novel she’d always dreamed of writing. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Andrea resided in the academic world, where she taught early modern history.
Y. S. LEE is the author of the award-winning Agency novels, a quartet of mysteries featuring a mixed-race girl detective in Victorian London. After earning a PhD in English literature, Ying realized that her true love was gritty historical detail — something she tries to make the most of in her fiction. She lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.
KATHERINE LONGSHORE is the author of four historical novels for young adults, including Gilt, a story of friendship and betrayal in the court of Henry VIII, and the “Downton-esque” Manor of Secrets. Writing allows her to indulge her twin passions for history and travel while remaining at home with her husband and kids.
MARIE LU is the New York Times best-selling author of the Legend trilogy and The Young Elites. Before writing full-time, she worked as an art director in the game industry. She lives with her husband and dogs in Los Angeles, where she spends her time writing and getting stuck in traffic.
KEKLA MAGOON is the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award–winning author of more than a dozen novels and nonfiction books for young readers, including How It Went Down; The Rock and the River; and X: A Novel (with Ilyasah Shabazz). Her books have been selected as ALA Notables, YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, and more. Kekla conducts school and library visits nationwide and teaches writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
MARISSA MEYER is the New York Times best-selling author of the Lunar Chronicles, a series of classic fairy-tale retellings set in the distant future (a long, long time after the Black Hills gold rush).
SAUNDRA MITCHELL is a great lover of history. She enjoys manipulating it in fiction like The Vespertine and celebrating it in nonfiction like her new series, They Did What? She lives in Indiana and thinks more people should write stories set there.
BETH REVIS is the New York Times best-selling author of the Across the Universe trilogy, as well as The Body Electric and several forthcoming YA books. She credits her father with fostering her knowledge and love of the Wild West and thanks him for fact-checking this story.
CAROLINE TUNG RICHMOND is the author of The Only Thing to Fear and the forthcoming The Darkest Hour, a YA novel set in Occupied France during World War II. A self-proclaimed history nerd, Caroline lives with her husband and daughter in the Washington, D.C., area — not far from several Civil War battlefields.
LINDSAY SMITH is the author of the Sekret series of paranormal spy thrillers set in Soviet Russia, and Dreamstrider, a high-fantasy adventure. She grew up watching far too many movies from the 1940s — from Abbott and Costello comedies to musicals to anything dazzling with old Hollywood glamour. Not one for California weather, however, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and dog, and writes on foreign affairs.
JESSICA SPOTSWOOD is the author of the Cahill Witch Chronicles, a historical-fantasy trilogy, as well as the contemporary novel Wild Swans. She grew up near the Gettysburg battlefield but now lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for the D.C. Public Library system as a children’s library associate.
ROBIN TALLEY is the author of Lies We Tell Ourselves, a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult, as well as the contemporary novel What We Left Behind and the upcoming thriller As I Descended. Robin lives in Washington, D.C., where she enjoys being surrounded by history, though she’s glad to be living in the twenty-first century.
LESLYE WALTON is the author of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, which was a 2015 Pacific Northwest Book Award winner, as well as a 2015 YALSA William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist. She lives in the Pacific Northwest but has recently been finding her dreams filled with vast desert skies and the gorgeous pink flowers of the prickly pear cactus. Her short story is the result of those dreams.
ELIZABETH WEIN is the New York Times best-selling author of Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire, and, most recently, Black Dove, White Raven. All three feature women as pilots in the early twentieth century — such rare birds in their own right that a black woman among them is a veritable phoenix. “The Color of the Sky” is a closer look at one of the real pilots whose life inspired a character in Black Dove, White Raven.