Bookable Authors: Upper Grades (8 12) English
Terry Farish
Terry Farish has been writing about refugees and immigrants for many years, informed by her early work for the Red Cross in Vietnam. She is also the author of Either the Beginning or the End of the World, and she lives in Kittery, Maine. View →
Marco Finnegan
Marco Finnegan is an educator by day and writes and draws comics by night. He lives in Temecula, California. View →
Jeff Fleischer
Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, editor, and journalist. He is the author of A Hot Mess: How the Climate Crisis Is Changing Our World (Zest Books, 2021), Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections (Zest Books, 2020 and 2016), Rockin’ the Boat:… View →
Emily Franklin
Emily Franklin is the author of more than a dozen young adult books. She lives with her husband, four kids, and an enormous dog outside of Boston, Massachusetts. View →
Shannon Gibney
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), and Dream Country (Dutton, 2018) young adult novels that won Minnesota Book Awards. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis College, where she teaches writing. A Bush Artist and… View →
Melanie Gillman
Melanie Gillman is a cartoonist and colored pencil artist who draws positive queer and trans comics for young readers. They are the creator of the webcomic and graphic novel As the Crow Flies, published in 2017 by Iron Circus Comics. As the Crow Flies has been named a 2018 Stonewall… View →
Geoffrey Girard
Geoffrey Girard writes thrillers, historicals, and dark speculative fiction for adults and teens. His first YA, the techno-thriller Project Cain, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. His short fiction has appeared in several best-selling anthologies and magazines, including Writers of… View →
John Grant
John Grant is author of about seventy books, including the highly successful Discarded Science, Corrupted Science, and Denying Science. He has received two Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and a number of other international literary awards. View →
Tessa Gratton
Tessa Gratton is the acclaimed author of six young adult novels. She currently lives in Kansas with her partner, two cats, and her mutant mutt named Grendel. View →
Josh Hicks
Josh Hicks is a cartoonist from Wales, UK. Born in 1991, he was raised in a small ex-coal-mining village and has since moved to a city that is twenty minutes away by train. He has been making comics since 2015, working with anthologies and independent publishers in the UK and… View →
Haiko Hörnig
Haiko Hörnig is a writer of screenplays and graphic novels. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he writes for various clients and works with Marius Pawlitza on their fantasy series A House Divided. View →
E.K. Johnston
The cool things about Emily Kate Johnston are that she is a forensic archaeologist, she has lived on four continents, she decorates cupcakes in her spare time, she adores the Oxford comma, and she loves to make up stories. The less cool things about Kate are that she’s from a… View →
Dan Jolley
Dan Jolley began writing professionally at the age of 19. Since starting out in comic books, he has worked for DC (Firestorm), Marvel (Dr. Strange), Dark Horse (Aliens), and Image (G.I. Joe). He later branched out into licensed-property novels (Star Trek), film novelizations (Iron Man),… View →
Patrick Jones
Patrick Jones lives in Minneapolis and is the author of many novels including the Support and Defend series. A former librarian, Jones received lifetime achievement awards from the American Library Association and the Catholic Library Association. View →
Amber J. Keyser
Evolutionary biologist-turned-author Amber J. Keyser has a MS in zoology and a PhD in genetics. She writes both fiction and non-fiction for tweens and teens. Her young adult novels include Pointe, Claw (Carolrhoda Lab, 2017), an explosive story about two girls claiming the territory of… View →
Kristen Lippert-Martin
Kristen Lippert-Martin earned her MFA from Columbia University. She’s worked at Time magazine, the world-renowned Brookings Institution, and even did a stint as a stand-up comic before turning to writing full-time. She’s a member of the Science Fiction and View →
Jennie Liu
Jennie Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She has been fascinated by the attitudes, social policies, and changes in China each time she visits. Her young adult novels have won honors including a Freeman Book Award Honorable Mention and an In the Margins: Best Books for Teens… View →
Amber Lough
Amber Lough grew up traveling around the world as the daughter of a Naval Officer and a drama teacher. When she was ten, she dreamed of being Indiana Jones, so she poured over archaeology books and tried to learn as many languages as she could. As a teen, she took View →
Marcia Amidon Lusted
Marcia Amidon Lusted has written 130 books and more than 500 magazine articles for young readers. She is a freelance editor and writing instructor, as well as a musician. She lives in New Hampshire. View →