Sherry Lee lives with her partner, Kevin, on the third floor of a ten-story building in Toronto. Their unit overlooks redbrick houses, backyards and a huge, embracing black walnut tree. It is a wonderful place to live. They walk almost anywhere they need to go, they have a lovely community of friends in their building and nature is abundant in their neighborhood. Sherry’s god-dog-child, Livy, lives one floor up with her main human, Daphne. Sherry has worked in the book industry for most of her life and has many books! She has a particularly fabulous library of children’s picture books she began collecting many years ago when she worked at The Children’s Bookstore.#Sherry’s debut picture book, Going Up!, is concerned with many of the things she values most: community, diversity, fun, food and animals! In spite of the fact that she grew up in a beautiful rural setting, she has lived in the city now for much longer. She experiences the city as equally beautiful to the country but in its own unique ways. There are so many different ways to live; welcoming each other with respect is the most important thing of all.~Instagram: @SherryJLee

Rina grew up in a small town in India that didn’t even have a public library. Imagine that! However, the library at the Catholic school she attended was well stocked and the books came from England. It didn’t matter that she didn’t relate to the mysteries and adventures set in castles or islands as long as she got to read.#When she grew up, she moved to Canada and spent a decade in Montreal, where she got an MFA in creative writing at Concordia University and then a teaching degree from McGill University. One of the assignments was to write a picture book. That started it all. She got a job in an arts-based school in Toronto, and for the next twenty-five years she taught hundreds of children poetry, visual arts and drama. In 2016, she left teaching, hoping to write full time. But truth be told, writing takes up 70% of the time and baking the rest.~ ~She is the author of many books. She has presented at literary conferences and festivals across Canada and even in Singapore. She is a spoken word coach for the tdsbCREATES Arts Festival.#Her daughter is a professional photographer in Toronto and her son works in finance in San Francisco. Rina lives with her husband in a blue house in Toronto. It’s surrounded by tall trees, and it feels like she is living in a forest. There are birds, squirrels, and even a rabbit and a pond with Japanese koi fish in it. Though she hasn’t written books about any of these creatures (yet), she likes writing among the trees. 111 Trees was written there after a trip to India, where she met the protagonist of the book.~Instagram: @storiesbysingh~Twitter: @storiesbysingh

Born and raised in China, Yinfan Huang is a New York–based author and illustrator who creates joyful, whimsical work for children’s books, magazines, brands and institutions worldwide. Some of her clients include the New Yorker, Flow magazine, Warby Parker and 3M Post-it Notes. Her love for children’s books started at the age of seven when she created her first picture book dummy, about a lazy kitty who tries to grow fish from a tree. She came to the United States in 2011 by herself to pursue her passion for illustration and earn a quality education in her chosen field. After three memorable years in Minnesota, she moved to New York City to become a professional illustrator, where she is inspired deeply by the city and its people. She has since published several children’s books and illustrated for children’s and adult magazines in China, North America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Her cartoons and comics have been published in the New Yorker in print and online since 2020. She has won prestigious awards from American Illustration, the Society of Illustrators and the World Illustration Awards. Yinfan lives in NYC with her two cats and two chinchillas.

Evie Robillard fell in love with Paris on her very first visit in 2001. Soon after that, she began reading every book she could find written by or about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas – two American women who met after moving to the City of Light in the early 1900s.#Evie is a former children’s librarian; before that she had a humorous newspaper column; before that she was a non-traditional (adult) student at UW-Green Bay and UW-Madison; before that she was a stay-at-home mom who loved reading to her children (and writing); before that she was a kid in a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan. Her very first job was helping her big brother deliver the local paper.#Evie’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was born in France; he was orphaned at a young age, and King Louis XIV sent him to Nouvelle-France around 1664. About 200 years later, her great-grandfather walked from the Trois-Rivières area of Quebec down through Michigan and Illinois and then into Wisconsin, carrying her grandfather (who died before she was born) in his arms.#Evie writes for both children and adults. Her early picture books and her children’s play – What Harold Was Afraid Of – are now out of print. She’s the mother of two grown sons – one a sports photographer, and one a punk-rock star. Nowadays she divides her time between her Madison, Wisconsin, apartment and her dear friend Michael’s nearby farm.

Carmen Oliver writes fiction and nonfiction picture books for children. Like D. Simon Jackson in the book A Voice for the Spirit Bears, Carmen has always loved bears. Growing up in Canada, she saw many bear species along the hiking trails but always kept a respectful distance. One day she hopes to see a white spirit bear in person in the Great Bear Rainforest.#Carmen’s work has been shortlisted for the Rainforest of Reading Award, The Writers’ League of Texas Awards and the CLEL Bell Picture Book Awards for Early Literacy. In 2014, she founded the Booking Biz, a boutique agency that brings award-winning children’s authors and illustrators to schools, libraries and special events. She also teaches writing at the Writing Barn and the Highlights Foundation and loves speaking at schools, conferences and festivals.#Carmen grew up in southern Manitoba, Canada, surrounded by lakes and prairie grasses. As a child, she built tree forts and homemade rafts, and studied tadpoles and woodland creatures in her backyard. Her favorite reading buddy was a yellow ride-on duck that she wheeled around her world while reading Mother Goose nursery rhymes, Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss. In school, she wrote poetry and articles for her high school newspaper. At college, she studied computer science and became a programmer analyst. In 2003, she and her husband moved to Austin, Texas, for his job. The wide-open spaces of Texas offered Carmen ample room to explore her dream of writing for children. In many of her school and speaking presentations, she shares her 10-year journey to publication and how we have to believe in our stories even when no one else does – every story matters.#Today, she spends a great deal of time working with writers of all ages on their stories and helping authors connect their books to audiences today, tomorrow and into the future. She and her family live in Round Rock, Texas.~Twitter: @carmenoliver