Ronald L. Smith is an award-winning writer of children's literature including the middle grade novels Black Panther: The Young Prince, The Mesmerist, The Owls Have Come To Take Us Away, and Gloomstown, a Junior Library Guild Selection. His first novel, Hoodoo, earned him the 2016 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award and the International Literacy Association Award for Intermediate Fiction. Before he became a full-time writer, he worked in advertising and wrote TV commercials for big corporations. He is much happier writing books for young people.