Strand: Books for Older Readers
E. Lockhart Author

E is the author of eight novels for teenagers.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was a National Book Award finalist and won the Cybils award for best YA novel and a Printz honor. She taught ‘writing for children’ for several years at New York University and has lectured at Hamline and Vermont College.

Strand: Books for Younger Readers
Mordicai Gerstein Author/Illustrator

Mordicai was born in Los Angeles, of all places, but went to New York, as soon as he could, where he made animated films for TV for twenty-five years until he began writing and illustrating picture books. He’s made over thirty of them and intends to make many more.

Strand: Editor Sessions
Cheryl Klein Senior Editor

Cheryl is the senior editor at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic where her authors and illustrators include Elizabeth C. Bunce, Katherine Paterson, Komako Sakai, David Small, Francisco X. Stork, and Lisa Yee. Please vist her website at http://www.cherylklein.com

Workshop Facilitator
Kerry Madden Author

Kerry is the author of the Maggie Valley Trilogy, published by Viking Children’s Books. The trilogy includes Gentle's Holler (2005), Louisiana’s Song (2007) and Jessie's Mountain (2008), set in the heart of Appalachia in the Smoky Mountains. Her first novel, Offsides, was a New York Public Library Pick for the Teen Age in 1997.

Her book Writing Smarts, published by American Girl, is full of story sparks for young writers. Her latest book, Harper Lee: Up Close, published by Viking, made Booklist's Ten Top Biographies of 2009 for Youth.

Kerry teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and has written essays for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, LA Weekly, Washington Post, the Sierra Club Magazine and others.