Sophie Blackall is an award-winning illustrator of over 50 books for children, including the New York Times best-selling Ivy and Bean series, the 2016 Caldecott Medal winner, Finding Winnie and the 2019 Caldecott Medal winner, Hello Lighthouse, which she also wrote. She is the five-time recipient of The New York Times Best Illustrated Picture Book Award and has worked with UNICEF and Save the Children, UK on global health and literacy initiatives. Originally from Australia, she now splits her time between Brooklyn, New York, and the Catskill Mountains, where she and her husband run a retreat for the children’s book community called Milkwood Farm.
Award-winning author Natasha Tripplett, is a Jewish-Jamaican American author, who lives in Northern California, where she writes from a tree house perched in a sycamore tree. Natasha is the recipient of the 2024 Mirrors and Windows: Excellence in Children’s Literature Golden Poppy Award for JUNETEENTH IS. Natasha has her master’s degree in social work and practiced in the field of adoptions. She has counseled families, adoptees, and children in foster care, and desires to help adoptees and those in foster care integrate their identity into one cohesive narrative.
Eugene Yelchin is a graduate of the Academy of Theater Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia where he designed sets and costumes for stage productions until his immigration to the United States. In 2006 at the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators conference in New York, Yelchin received Tomie DePaola Illustration Award and began writing and illustrating books for children. Since then, Yelchin received numerous awards for his books. Among them are Newbery Honor (Breaking Stalin’s Nose), National Book Award Finalist (The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge co-authored with M.T. Anderson), Sydney Taylor Award (The Genius Under the Table), National Jewish Book Award (The Rooster Prince of Breslov), Golden Kite Award (The Haunting of Falcon House), Crystal Kite Award (Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku), and many more.