Monica Kulling was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and grew up in the Fraser Valley, surrounded by mountains. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria, where her focus was poetry. When Monica enrolled in a course about children’s literature, she was immediately hooked. Although she spent years enduring many rejections of her work, her love of writing for young readers never wavered.#Monica Kulling is the author of numerous books for children, including the popular Great Idea series, which features stories of inventors. Her books have been selected for many honors, including the Silver Birch Express Award, the Red Cedar Book Award, the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award, the Shining Willow Award and the Norma Fleck Award for Children’s Non-Fiction. Her book In the Bag!: Margaret Knight Wraps It Up was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Illustration and chosen as a Once Upon a World Children’s Book Award Honor Book by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Monica Kulling lives in Toronto.

Claire Eamer is the author of almost a dozen nonfiction books, a picture book that is definitely fiction (honest!) and a handful of fantasy stories. Her book Before the World Was Ready won the 2013 Lane Anderson Award for Canadian science writing for children. Another of her books, The World in Your Lunch Box, won British Columbia’s 2014 Red Cedar Award, and What a Waste: Where Does Garbage Go?, won the 2018 American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award. Also in 2018, her (very fictional) picture book, Underneath the Sidewalk, won Saskatchewan’s Shining Willow Award.~ ~Besides writing books for kids, Claire writes magazine and newspaper articles, mostly on scientific topics. The best thing about writing, she says, is all the new things you learn with every book or article.~ ~Claire has been a touring author for TD Canadian Children’s Book Week – once in southern Ontario and once in Nunavut. The trip to Nunavut completed her Canadian geography list: she has now visited all ten of Canada’s provinces and all three territories. And she has lived in almost half of them. Claire grew up in Saskatoon, where she got to ride her bike across the prairie, toboggan down the riverbank right onto the ice and wade into sloughs as deep as she wanted. Since then, she has also lived in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Yukon and British Columbia – plus England and Germany.~ ~Currently, Claire lives on British Columbia’s Gabriola Island in the Salish Sea, where she shares a few acres of trees and rock with two generations of her family, a whole lot of chickens and a seemingly endless stream of passing deer and birds. Oh, and a small flock of Indian runner ducks – possibly the silliest creatures on two flat feet. Look them up!~Twitter: @CEamer~Instagram: @claire.eamer

Margriet Ruurs lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, and is the author of 35 books for children. With a Master of Education degree from Simon Fraser University, she teaches writing workshops at elementary schools across North America. The recipient of the International Reading Association’s Presidential Award for Reading and Technology, Margriet conducts author visits, writing workshops and conference presentations from Mongolia to Israel and many places in between. She writes a regular column for Canadian Teacher Magazine and book reviews for the International Educator. Margriet is a popular speaker at reading and literacy conferences. She conducts school visits throughout the school year, sharing her love of reading and writing with thousands of students and teachers in person or via Skype.#“Books truly are a window to the world,” she says. “I learned so much from books when I was a child. And now I love to share stories with children everywhere.“ Many of her books have won awards, including the Storytelling World Award Honor and the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award. My Librarian Is a Camel was awarded the Teachers’ Choice Award and honored as one of IRA’s Notable Books for a Global Society.#Many of Margriet’s books reflect her interest in global issues and the environment. Together with her park ranger husband, she has lived in many places across North America. She likes to read, travel and hike. Currently she runs Between the Covers, a booklovers’ B & B on Salt Spring Island.

Heather Tekavec discovered while working as a preschool teacher that children’s books were a lot more fun than adult books. After falling in love with the works of Pat Hutchins, Keiko Kasza, Jez Alborough and many others, she couldn’t help but start writing some of her own. It’s probably not coincidence that the first two of her eleven published books, Storm Is Coming! and What’s That Awful Smell?, mirror two of her own childhood fears – thunder and yucky smells!#In addition to books, Heather enjoys writing short stories, articles and poems for children’s magazines, such as CRICKET, Chirp, Highlights and Totline, and has delved a few times into writing scripts and directing live theater.#Twenty-some years since it began, Heather still thinks children’s books are more fun than adult books. Wanted: Criminals of the Animal Kingdom is her twelfth published book.#Heather doesn’t teach preschool anymore but still loves meeting children during author visits to schools and libraries. She lives with her husband and three daughters in Cloverdale, British Columbia, sometimes writing, sometimes playing and always reading … children’s books!