Lisa Deresti Betik has been a storyteller since she was small. She used to spin wild tales about invisible, blanket-eating alligators in her room, and she once convinced everyone that the Tooth Fairy had made her fall out of bed. Today she writes fun, fascinating nonfiction books for children. She is the author of Think Like a Goat: The Wildly Smart Ways Animals Communicate, Cooperate and Innovate (Kids Can Press, 2023) and In the Dark: The Science of What Happens at Night (Kids Can Press, 2020). #Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Lisa grew up surrounded by majestic lakes and forests that encouraged her curiosity. She is a graduate of the Concurrent Teacher Education program at Queen’s University, and she loves helping young people learn more about our amazing world. Lisa now lives in Waterloo, Ontario, with her family, where she keeps a Little Free Library on their front lawn.

Julia De Laurentiis Johnston loves women. And she loves adventures! She’s had a few of her own, like moving to London to go to journalism school or creating a bunch of podcasts that have won national and international awards. Or working with her favorite publication of all time, Shameless, holding various roles like arts editor and features editor or running the Shameless podcast camp for youth. Now, she sits on their board. Julia’s inspired by women and nonbinary folks who live their lives with joy, grit and vulnerability, and that’s who she was thinking about when she wrote this book – her very first one! Her greatest adventures include being asked to use a sword to cut someone else’s birthday cake while floating down the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul and, more recently, motherhood. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Ria Voros is the author of middle grade and young adult novels that have been finalists for the White Pine Award, the Rocky Mountain Book Award, and been a Best Books for Kids and Teens selection. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, though part of her wishes she could go back in time and also get a Master’s in anthropology because she is a story junkie and the world is made of fascinating stories. She is also a college instructor, elementary school teacher and dessert-maker/consumer.#When she’s not writing, teaching or eating sweet things, Ria can be found hiking to the tops of mountains or continuously getting the sand out of her children’s shoes at the beach. She believes in recycling, self-care and hot summer mornings. She lives in Victoria, BC, Canada with her husband, daughter and son.

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