Peter Brown, The Wild Robot on the Island

Peter Brown is the author and illustrator of many bestselling children’s books, including The Wild Robot Trilogy, Children Make Terrible Pets and The Curious Garden. He is the recipient of a Caldecott Honor for Creepy Carrots!, two E.B. White Read Aloud Awards, a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book award, and a Children’s Choice Award for Illustrator of the Year. Peter’s website is www.peterbrownstudio.com.

Jerry Craft, J VS. K

Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the graphic novels New Kid, Class Act, and School Trip. New Kid is the only book in history to win the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature (2020); the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature (2019), and the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the most outstanding work by an African American writer (2020). Jerry was born in Harlem and grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City and now travels the world telling kids and their families about the importance of reading.

Erin Entrada Kelly, The Last Resort

Erin Entrada Kelly is a two-time Newbery Medalist and National Book Award Finalist whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is a New York Times-bestselling author and teaches in the Master’s Program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Hamline University. She lives in Delaware.​

Chelsea Handler, I’ll Have What She’s Having

Chelsea Handler is a comedian, television host, and seven-time New York Times best-selling author whose humor and candor have established her as one of the most celebrated voices in entertainment and pop culture. After a strong seven-year run as the host of E!’s top-rated Chelsea Lately, a tenure in which she was the only female late-night talk show host on-air, she launched her documentary series Chelsea Does, followed by her talk show Chelsea on Netflix in 2016. She has penned seven New York Times best-selling books, six of which have reached #1, including her seventh and most recent book I’ll Have What She’s Having, published February 2025.

🎟️ Tickets for Chelsea Handler’s session will go on sale in September.

Ali Hazelwood, Mate

Ali Hazelwood is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love, Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis, as well as a writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy. Originally from Italy, she lived in Germany and Japan before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. When Ali is not at work, she can be found crocheting, eating cake pops, or watching sci-fi movies with her three feline overlords (and her slightly-less-feline husband).

Skip Hollandsworth, She Kills: The Murderous Socialite, the Cross-Dressing Bank Robber, and Other True Crime Tales

Skip Hollandsworth is an award-winning journalist, screenwriter, and executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine. He has won a National Magazine Award for feature writing, and his 2016 book, The Midnight Assassin, was a New York Times bestseller. Hollandsworth also co-wrote the acclaimed screenplay Bernie with director Richard Linklater. The film was based on Hollandsworth’s 1998 Texas Monthly article “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.” Linklater recently adapted Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article “Hit Man” for a 2024 feature with Glen Powell. Hollandsworth lives in Texas, where he and his wife have raised two children.

Ibram X. Kendi, Malcolm Lives!

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is a National Book Award-winning author of 15 books for adults and children, including New York Times bestsellers like Stamped From the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist. Dr. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in Humanities at Boston University and a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant.” In the summer of 2025, he will join Howard University as Professor of History and Director of its newly established Howard Institute for Advanced Study.

Kiese Laymon, City Summer, Country Summer

Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the genre-bending novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. He was also the recipient of the 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard and a MacArthur Genius grant. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Rice University.

Ada Limón, Startlement: New and Selected Poems

Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate and the editor of the national bestselling anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She is the author of The Hurting Kind and five other collections of poems, including The Carrying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her children’s book In Praise of Mystery will be published in October 2024. Limón has received both a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review. She now resides in California where she was born and raised.

Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You

Patricia Lockwood is the bestselling author of the Booker Prize finalist and Dylan Thomas Prize-winning novel No One Is Talking About This, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2021 by The New York Times Book Review and one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the past 100 years. Her other books include the memoir Priestdaddy, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review as well as two poetry collections. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.

Meg Medina, Graciela in the Abyss

Meg Medina is a former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and the author of the Newbery Medal–winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears, which was also a Kirkus Prize finalist, and its sequels, Merci Suárez Can’t Dance and Merci Suárez Plays It Cool, as well as several award-winning young adult novels and picture books. About this novel she says, “To survive in the darkest depths of the sea, creatures must learn to make their own spectacular light. In so many ways, that ability mirrors what young people need on their journey of growing up.” The daughter of Cuban immigrants, Meg Medina lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Jason Reynolds, Coach

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of many award-winning books, including All American Boys (with Brendan Kiely), Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…, Stuntboy, in the Meantime (illustrated by Raúl the Third), and There Was a Party for Langston (illustrated by the Pumphrey brothers). The recipient of a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, an NAACP Image Award, and multiple Coretta Scott King honors, Reynolds was the 2020-2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and is a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. He has appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, and various media outlets. He is on faculty at Lesley University, for the Writing for Young People MFA Program and lives in Washington, DC.

Kylie Sakaida, So Easy So Good: Delicious Recipes and Expert Tips for Balanced Eating

Kylie Sakaida is a registered dietitian, content creator, and the New York Times bestselling author of So Easy So Good. Her popular TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube @NutritionbyKylie accounts feature tips, tricks, and nutrition advice mixed with her favorite recipes and personal journey with her millions of followers. Kylie firmly believes that nutrition and health tips should be easy, realistic, and fun. She strives to help others optimize their health, rebuild their relationship with food, and learn how to nourish their bodies. Kylie was born and raised in Honolulu, graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nutrition science from Boston University, and now resides in Los Angeles.

Adam Silvera, The Survivor Wants to Die at the End

Adam Silvera is the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of They Both Die at the End, The First to Die at the End, The Survivor Wants to Die at the End, More Happy Than Not, History Is All You Left Me, and the Infinity Cycle (Infinity Son, Infinity Reaper, and Infinity Kings) and coauthor of What If It’s Us and Here’s to Us. He is tall for no reason.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation

Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC’s signature morning program. He is also the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook, an online daily financial report published by The New York Times that he started in 2001. Sorkin is the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, and the co-producer of the 2011 film adaptation, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. Sorkin is also co-creator of the drama series Billions on Showtime.

R.L Stine, The Last Sleepover

R.L. Stine is the creator of the bestselling Goosebumps series, which has more than 400 million copies in print worldwide and celebrated 30 years in 2022. Goosebumps is one of the bestselling children’s series of all-time and inspired a popular television show, as well as a feature film starring Jack Black that opened at #1 at the box office. His other popular children’s books include the series Fear Street, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room, and Rotten School, and his picture books, with Marc Brown, The Little Shop of Monsters; Mary McScary; and Why Did the Monster Cross the Road?. R.L. Stine lives in New York City. You can connect with him on Twitter at @RL_Stine or Facebook: facebook.com/rlstine. For more information, visit rlstine.com and scholastic.com/goosebumps.

Nic Stone, Boom Town

Nic Stone is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin. A Spelman College graduate, Nic lives in Atlanta with her family. Boom Town is her first adult novel.

Bryan Washington, Palaver

Bryan Washington is the author of the story collection Lot and the novels Memorial and Family Meal. A National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree, he is the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, two Lambda Literary Awards, and an O. Henry Prize, and he has been a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence, and the James Tait Black Prize. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, his writing has also appeared in Granta, The New York Times Magazine, New York, Time, GQ, and Esquire, among many other places. He is based in Tokyo.