Cheryl Klein is the editorial director at Lee & Low Books. She is also the author of two adult books, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults and Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults, and three picture books, Wings, Thunder Trucks, and A Year of Magical Thinking. Prior to her work at Lee & Low, she spent sixteen years at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, where she published a wide array of acclaimed titles and served as the continuity editor for the last two books of the Harry Potter series. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and can be found online as @chavelaque.
Uma Krishnaswami is the author of more than twenty books for young readers, from picture books (Monsoon, The Happiest Tree, The Girl of the Wish Garden, Bright Sky, Starry City and Out of the Way! Out of the Way!), through novels for young readers (The Grand Plan to Fix Everything and Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh). Twenty years after its first publication, her traditional story collection The Broken Tusk: Stories of the Hindu God Ganesha continues to be a definitive introduction to Hindu mythology for young readers. Uma has also written short stories and poems for magazines and anthologies.
Uma’s books have been published in eleven languages and picked for CCBC Choices, Parents’ Choice, the Junior Library Guild, USBBY’s Outstanding International Books, the South Asia Book Award Honor, Bank Street Best Books of the Year, Children’s Choice nominations in the U.S. and Canada, the Scholastic Asian Book Award (Singapore), the Crossword Award (India) and others.
Born in New Delhi, India, Uma teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, Vermont, in the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Many of her students have gone on to establish successful writing careers.
Baptiste Paul is a Caribbean-born author of three books for children. His debut picture book, TheField, received starred reviews from Kirkus, The Horn Book, and Booklist. According to Kirkus,his co-authored book Adventures To School, will “will pique readers’ curiosity.” His picture book biography, I Am Farmer, chronicles the work of Cameroonian environmentalist Tantoh Nforba. Born and raised on the island of Saint Lucia, Baptiste is a native Creole/Patois speaker who enjoys reading his books and sharing about his experiences with anyone who will listen. Learn more about Baptiste at baptistepaul.net
Miranda Paul is an award-winning author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction books for children. She has received starred reviews and Junior Library Guild distinction for several titles, including One Plastic Bag, Water is Water, I Am Farmer, Nine Months, and Little Libraries, Big Heroes. Her book, Whose Hands Are These? was an ILA Teacher’s Choice and her edited poetry collection, Thanku: Poems of Gratitude, was a 2020 ALA Notable title for all ages. Miranda is a frequent presenter at schools around the world, and has presented at the Library of Congress Young Readers Center with environmental activist Isatou Ceesay. She is a co-founding member of We Need Diverse Books. More at MirandaPaul.com.
Miranda Paul is also an Associate Agent with Erin Murphy Literary Agency.
Namrata Tripathi is vice president & publisher of Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers dedicated to centering stories from the margins. Previously, Namrata held editorial positions at HarperCollins, Disney-Hyperion, and Simon and Schuster. She is the editor of the picture books My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña and Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry and Vashti Harrison; the Newbery Honor-winning middle grade novel The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani; and the YA novels Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay and Noggin by John Corey Whaley, which were both National Book Award Finalists. Namrata grew up in Afghanistan, India, Canada, Pakistan, Germany, and Poland, and has happily called New York City home for the last twenty years. Follow her on Twitter: @Tweetpathi.