Alicia D. Williams's debut, the middle-grade novel Genesis Begins Again, received a Newbery Honor and was a Kirkus Prize nominee and a Morris Award finalist. It also won the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe New Talent Author Award. Alicia is a graduate of the MFA program at Hamline University. An oral storyteller in the African American tradition, she also teaches kindergarten. Learn more at aliciadwilliams.com.

April Harrison, a renowned folk artist, is the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning illustrator of Patricia C. McKissack's final picture book, What Is Given from the Heart, which received four starred reviews and which the New York Times Book Review called an exquisite story of generosity. Most recently, she illustrated Nana Akua Goes to School by Patricia Elam Walker. Her work appears in the public collections of Vanderbilt University, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, the Atlanta Housing Authority, and the Erskine University Museum and in many private collections.