Monique Gray Smith is an award-winning, bestselling author and public speaker. Her books cover a broad spectrum of ages, topics and emotions. Woven into all of Monique’s writing and her speaking engagements is the teaching that Love is Medicine. Her books include Speaking our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation, My Heart Fills With Happiness, You Hold Me Up, Lucy and Lola, Tilly: A Story of Hope and Resilience, Tilly and the Crazy Eights, When We Are Kind and I Hope. She has also created the young adult adaptation of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Monique is Cree and Scottish. She lives with her family on the Traditional Territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and WSÁNEĆ Peoples.

Julie Flett is a Swampy Cree and Red River Métis artist and author. She studied fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal and Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. She won the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature for her work on When We Were Alone by David Robertson, and her book Birdsong won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. She is the three-time recipient of the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Award for Owls See Clearly at Night: A Michif Alphabet, Dolphin SOS and My Heart Fills With Happiness.

Lawrence Schimel writes in both Spanish and English and has published over 120 books as author or anthologist in a wide range of genres, including fiction, poetry, graphic novels and children’s literature. He has twice won a Lambda Literary Award and has also won a Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, a White Raven from the International Youth Library in Munich, and has been chosen for IBBY's Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities three times. Lawrence is also a prolific literary translator. He lives in Madrid, Spain, where he founded the Spanish chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and served as Regional Advisor for five years.