Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Willy Vlautin started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and quickly became immersed in music. It was a Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver’s Too Much Water So Close to Home that inspired him to start writing stories. Vlautin has published five novels: THE MOTEL LIFE (2007), NORTHLINE (2008), LEAN ON PETE (2010), THE FREE (2014), and, most recently, DON’T SKIP OUT ON ME.
Read MoreElizabeth Rose Stanton began her picture book writing and illustrating adventure a few years ago, after a brief career as an architect, and long career as a parent and fine artist. Her debut book, Henny, was awarded an American Library Association Booklist star and was named as one of the best books of 2014 for children by The New York Public Library. School Library Journal called her second book, Peddles, “quietly wonderful,” and the illustrations, “a thing of beauty.”
Read MoreJ. Anderson Coats is the author of The Wicked and the Just, one of Kirkus’s Best Teen Books of 2012, a 2013 YALSA Best for Young Adults (BFYA) winner, and a School Library Journal Best Books of 2012 selection. It also won the 2013 Washington State Book Award for Young Adults.
Her newest book is R is for Rebel (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2018), a middle-grade novel about coercion and resistance in a reform school in a fictional occupied country. Her short story, “Mother Carey’s Table,” appeared in A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers, and Other Badass Girls (Candlewick, 2016).
Read More
