Lesa Cline-Ransome

Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of numerous nonfiction and historical fiction titles for picture book, chapter book, middle grade, and young adult readers including Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams and The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne. Her verse biography of Harriet Tubman, Before She Was Harriet was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and received a Jane Addams Children's Book Honor, Christopher Award, and Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration. Her debut middle grade novel, Finding Langston, won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and received the Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. She lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York with her husband and frequent collaborator, James Ransome, and their family. Visit her at LesaClineRansome.com.

Kaylani Juanita is an illustrator based in Fairfield, California, who illustrates inclusive picture books, editorial art, and afros. Her book Magnificent Bomespun Brown, written by Samara Cole Doyon, received the 2021 Coretta Scott King Honor Award for illustration. Her work has been recognized by Society of Illustrators, HuffPost, and BBC. California grown and raised, she studied at CalArts and California College of the Arts for a BFA in illustration. Her mission as an artist is to support the stories of the underrepresented and create new ways for people to imagine themselves. You can find her lurking in public secretly drawing strangers or writing nonsensical stories about who knows what.