Shannon Hunt grew up on a small sailboat in the Caribbean, a circumstance she blames for her aversion to all exercise except swimming and her ability to tell her stern from her bow – admittedly, not a particularly useful life skill. After an unusually long (ten-year) stopover in Florida, her parents packed up and moved home to Canada, settling on a small island in British Columbia. While taking a water taxi to high school every day was cool, making new friends in grade 12 was not, so she spent lots of time by herself writing stories and articles, some of which were published in the local newspaper.#After graduation, Shannon moved to a larger island (the 43rd largest in the world to be exact) and worked her way through bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Victoria, pausing for an eight-month long stint in Barcelona where she practiced her Spanish, wrote more stories and ate lots of paella.#After university, Shannon was roped into starting up a kids’ science magazine, YES Mag, by a computer engineering grad who dreamed of making science and engineering interesting and entertaining. Over the course of fifteen years, they started a second magazine, KNOW, and won awards, including the Distinguished Young Alumni Award from the University of Victoria, the Eve Savory Award for Science Communication from the BC Innovation Council, the Michael Smith Award for Science Promotion from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Periodical of the Year from the Association of Educational Publishers.#Shannon is a co-editor of the non-fiction titles The Amazing International Space Station, Fantastic Feats and Failures, Science Detectives, Hoaxed!, and Robots, and the author of the fiction title Peril on Pender.#She lives in Victoria, British Columbia with her husband, two awesome kids and a crazy labradoodle – who all engineer equal parts magic and mayhem into her life.

Mireille Messier is a Montreal-born, Ottawa-raised and now Toronto-based children’s writer with a background in broadcasting and theater. Before becoming an author, Mireille worked as a television and radio host, a director, a researcher, a book reviewer and a voice actress. Sometimes, she still does those things, too. One of her first “literary” jobs was writing jokes for the bottom of pudding lids!#Since the launch of her first book in 2003, Mireille has published over twenty books. When she’s not at her computer writing, she thinks up new stories while she walks, drives or sails her big old boat. #Mireille loves doing author visits. On average, she meets about three thousand kids a year … give or take a thousand. Some of the funniest questions she has been asked by students are: “Do you dream in French?” (Yes!), “How many minutes does it take you to write a book?” (About a million!) and “Are any of the characters in your books real?” (Yes, they are often different versions of me and the people I know).#Mireille lives in Toronto with her husband, two wonderful teenage daughters and two extremely fluffy cats.

Erica was raised by her parents, yes, but also by the books of Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary and Norma Klein. She attended the University of Guelph, earning a bachelor’s degree in English and drama. She received her master’s degree from York University in film.#From there, she was a script editor for a production company that specialized in children’s films, and an editor in educational publishing.#Erica lives in Toronto with her family, including two beloved pets: Marzipan and Clover.