Irene Latham lives on a lake in rural Alabama. Winner of the 2016 ILA Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award, she is the author of hundreds of poems and nearly twenty current and forthcoming poetry, fiction and picture books from publishers including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Lerner, Charlesbridge, Boyd Mills/Kane, Candlewick, and others. Her books have been recognized on state lists and honored by NEA, ALA, NCTE, SIBA, Bank Street College and other organizations.

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes is an award-winning children’s poet and anthologist, whose work appears in books, magazines, on plaques, and in greeting cards. Her creative challenge is to paint moments with words—coaxing out their natural musicality as they bounce around in her imagination.

Michelle lives in Florida, by way of New York, Boston, New Mexico, and Australia. Her home away from home is her blog Today's Little Ditty—a lively community of writers, teachers, librarians, and poetry-appreciators who gather to write, learn, and share the joy of poetry.

Visit Michelle at her website, MichelleHBarnes.com, at Today's Little Ditty, MichelleHBarnes.blogspot.com, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Sylvia Vardell is Professor Emerita in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University where she taught courses in literature for children and young adults. She has authored or co-authored more than 100 published articles, more than 25 book chapters and given more than 150 presentations at national and international conferences. She authored the seminal textbook in library science, CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN ACTION: A LIBRARIAN'S GUIDE, as well as POETRY ALOUD HERE!, A WORLD FULL OF POEMS, and co-edited The Poetry Friday Anthology series and Poetry Friday Power Book series (with Janet Wong) and maintains the PoetryForChildren blog.

She served as co-editor of the international journal, BOOKBIRD and on several national award committees including the ALA Caldecott Award, Legacy Award, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for nonfiction, and the NCTE Award for Poetry. She has received grants from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, NCTE, the ALAN Foundation, the Texas Library Association, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has also taught at the University of Zimbabwe in Africa as a Fulbright scholar. She is the 2014 recipient of the Scholastic Library Publishing Award. In her spare time, she loves to travel, shop, all things Star Wars, and sees 100+ movies a year.

Renée M. LaTulippe is a young people's poet and author who lives by the sea in Italy. Her first poem picture book, THE CRAB BALLET, invites readers to a spectacular seaside show where crabs, urchins, seahorses, and all their aquatic friends dance and leap and pirouette in the waves. Her next book, LIMELIGHT: Theater Poems to Perform (pub TBA) is a middle grade collection of poetry that gives voice to the stage, the props, the dressing room mirror, the curtain, the seats, and other parts of the theater as they prepare a musical for opening night.

Renée also has poems published in many anthologies including SCHOOL PEOPLE, NIGHT WISHES, THANKU, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BOOK OF NATURE POETRY, NAT GEO'S THE POETRY OF US, ONE MINUTE TILL BEDTIME, POEMS ARE TEACHERS, and A WORLD FULL OF POEMS.

When not writing, Renée teaches her online course The Lyrical Language Lab, provides writing lessons on her YouTube channel, and blogs on children’s poetry at NoWaterRiver.com. You can find her at www.reneelatulippe.com.

Suzy Levinson is a children’s author and poet whose work has been featured in numerous anthologies and magazines. ANIMALS IN PANTS (Cameron Kids/Abrams) is her debut picture book–length poetry collection. Her next, DINOS THAT DRIVE! (Tundra Books), will hit shelves in 2025. She lives in New York.