Cecil Castellucci is the two-time MacDowell Colony fellow and award winning author of books for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, and Beige. She is also the young adult and children's books editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Castellucci's books have been on the American Library Association's (ALA's) Best Books for Young Adults, Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, and Great Graphic Novels for Teens lists, as well as the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age and the Amelia Bloomer lists. Born in New York City, Cecil lives in Los Angeles.

Nate Powell is an Arkansas native and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist whose works include Swallow Me Whole (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), Any Empire, and (with co-authors Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin) the March trilogy, the final volume of which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Powell is the first cartoonist to receive this honor. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.