So you’re still stuck at home. So are we. So is everyone. But the good news is that books exist and you have plenty of time to discover some authors
Cameron Lund
Cameron Lund is a young adult author, singer/songwriter, and cheese enthusiast.
Originally from the middle of the New Hampshire woods, she moved to the beach to study film at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has stayed out west ever since. Her love of travel has taken her to more than 25 countries–there’s nothing she loves more than writing while on an adventure somewhere, preferably with a view of a waterfall.
Cameron’s debut novel, The Best Laid Plans, will be released with Razorbill (Penguin/Randomhouse) on April 7th, 2020.
June Hur
JUNE HUR (‘Hur’ as in ‘her’) was born in South Korea and raised in Canada, except for the time when she moved back to Korea and attended high school there. Most of her work is inspired by her journey through life as an individual, a dreamer, and a Christian, with all its confusions, doubts, absurdities and magnificence. She studied History and Literature at the University of Toronto, and currently works for the public library. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter.
Her debut novel The Silence of Bones (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, April 2020) is a murder mystery set in Joseon Dynasty Korea (early 1800s), and also a coming-of-age tale about a girl searching for home. It was recently selected the American Booksellers Association as one of the top debuts of Winter/Spring 2020.
Maragarita Montimore
After receiving a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, Margarita Montimore worked for over a decade in publishing and social media before deciding to focus on the writing dream full-time. She’s blogged for Marvel, Google, Quirk Books, and XOJane.com. When not writing, she freelances as a book coach and editor. Born in Soviet Ukraine and raised in Brooklyn, she currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and dog.
Margarita writes upmarket fiction that tends to be left of center and flirt with multiple genres. She loves all things dark, strange, and surreal, but is also optimistic—verging on quixotic—and a pop culture geek, so her work tends to incorporate all those elements to varying degrees.
In 2018, she self-published Asleep from Day. Her proper debut, Oona Out of Order is forthcoming from Flatiron Books on February 25, 2020.
Rex Ogle
Rex Ogle began his editorial career at DC Comics, working on flagship titles like Justice League, Teen Titans, and Superman/Batman. From there, he moved to Scholastic where he helmed New York Times bestselling series like Star Wars: Jedi Academy and Study Hall of Justice, and later, Little Brown for Young Readers, where he developed titles such as the Classroom 13 series and Neil Patrick Harris’s Magic Misfits. Rex Ogle has more than 100 published titles in the children’s space under various pen names, but is most proud of the ones he writes under his own name. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle’s first semester in sixth grade when he was on his school’s free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex’s is a compelling story of a more profound hunger–that of a child for his parents’ love and care.
Leah Johnson
Leah Johnson was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana—a tried and true, lifelong Hoosier (and as you can perhaps imagine, much of her work now features more cornfields and soybeans than any one human has business writing about). She began her writing career with a spiral notebook full of short stories in Mrs. Peacock’s fifth-grade class and could never quite bring herself to stop.
She went on to major in Journalism and African American Studies at Indiana University and while there; worked as a reporter covering race and class for an NPR affiliate, as an audio initiatives intern at the Wall Street Journal, and won a Roy W. Howard National Collegiate Reporting Competition Fellowship, which took her to Japan to study international reporting. Eventually, Leah shifted her storytelling vehicle to fiction (and the occasional personal essay) and pursued her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
This summer, Leah will be a visiting writer at New England College and is currently a staff contributing editor at Catapult. When she’s not writing or ranting about pop culture and politics on Twitter, Leah teaches creative writing and composition to undergraduate students in and around New York City. Her YA novels You Should See Me in a Crown(June 2020) and Rise to the Sun (2021) are forthcoming from Scholastic.
Jennifer Moffett
Jennifer Moffett has published short stories, poems, essays, travel articles, and reviews in various magazines and literary journals. Her debut YA novel, Those Who Prey, will be published by Atheneum, Simon & Schuster on November 10, 2020.
An Arkansas native, Jennifer spent her childhood playing in creeks and climbing trees while dreaming up outlandish stories and occasionally writing them down. After working in the children’s television industry in New York City, she completed her master’s degree in Creative Writing at The University of Mississippi. She started publishing her work as a journalist and books editor, writing numerous book reviews and author profiles for regional publications.
Her fiction and poetry have appeared in the New Orleans Review, Hartskill Review, Revolution House, Sundress Publications’ book Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place, as well as in other publications. She is the recipient of The Gary Wilson Short Fiction Award for a story published in the literary journal descant, where she is an associate editor.
She teaches creative writing at a community college on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where she enjoys kayaking, gardening, reading outdoors, and planning trips to new places (preferably with great local yarn shops and bookstores).
Chelsea Ichaso
Chelsea Ichaso writes twisty thrillers for young adults, including LITTLE CREEPING THINGS (Sourcebooks Fire, 2020). A former high school English teacher, she currently resides in southern California with her husband and children. When she’s not reading or writing, Chelsea can be found on the soccer field.
Jennifer Gruenke
She’s a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, where she studied communication and writing. She grew up among the redwoods of Northern California, and now lives in Charlotte with her books and the houseplants she hasn’t killed yet. If she is not writing or reading, you’re most likely to find her in a cafe, music venue, or the aisles of Trader Joe’s. Of Silver and Shadow is her debut novel.
Candice Marley Conner
Candice Marley Conner lives with her husband, two children—Mermaid Girl and Dinosaur Boy—and two tiny-but-ferocious tiger-cats at the bottom of Alabama where the antebellum lady rests her feet in the Gulf of Mexico. Her debut picture book, Sassafras and Her Teeny Tiny Tail, releases with MacLaren-Cochrane Publishing in 2019.
A book nerd at a haunted indie bookstore and a Local Liaison for SCBWI, her work is found in Babybug Magazine, collections such asPieces: Mardi Gras, A Mobile Writers’ Guild Anthology, Fireflies & Fairy Dust: A Fantasy Anthology, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and online at Mothers Always Write, Mamalode, and The Good Mother Project.
S. A. Patel
S.A. Patel was born in vibrant India and raised in the heart of Texas, surrounded by a lot of delicious food and plenty of diversity. She draws on personal experiences, cultural expectations, and southern flair to create worlds that center around strong Indian women. Once in MMA, she’s now all about puppies and rainbows and tortured love stories.
Booked All Night 