Alan Woo was born in England, came to Canada when he was a young boy and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he still lives. He always wanted to be a writer and gets his inspiration from his Chinese Canadian heritage, his friends and family, reading lots of books, going to live theatre, meeting new people, traveling and playing with cats! He is the award-winning author of several picture books, and his work has also been published in Ricepaper magazine and Quills Canadian Poetry magazine.

J. Torres is a Filipino-born Canadian comic book writer. He is perhaps best known for his run on DC Comics’ Teen Titans Go!, the Forest of Reading Honour Book Planet Hockey, the Junior Library Guild and TD Summer Reading Club title Bigfoot Boy, and Lola: A Ghost Story, recipient of an Aesop Accolade from the American Folklore Society. Torres was born in Manila and raised in Montreal where he was educated at McGill University. He is married, has two sons and currently resides in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario.~Instagram: @jtorrescomics~Twitter: @jtorrescomics

Lana Button is from the tiny border town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick. She grew up with a passion to perform, spending hours singing into her skipping-rope handle to large crowds of imaginary people. Lana studied acting and performed in front of theatergoing crowds and on TV and film sets in Montreal and Vancouver. But when she began studying early childhood education, Lana fell in love with the magic of picture books and began writing. She strives to tell self-esteem-boosting stories that give children something to cheer about!#Lana loves author visits and presentations. She has had the pleasure of presenting to large crowds of non-imaginary children in school settings, libraries and festivals, from Saskatchewan’s Festival of Words to St. Lucia’s Rainforest of Reading. She was also a proud touring author for TD Canadian Children’s Book Week.#Lana works with literary organizations that support children through books, such as IBBY Canada, First Book Canada and the One World School House. She and her husband live in Burlington, Ontario, with their doting dog and their demanding cat. Lana has three amazing daughters who are all grown up, but will thankfully still listen to picture books.

Hadley Dyer began her career as a children’s bookseller and reviewer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She now lives in Toronto, where she divides her time between writing, editing and teaching. Her previous books include an award-winning young adult novel and a dozen nonfiction titles on a range of topics, from manatees to baseball. She is a regular contributor to magazines such as Owl, Chickadee and Toronto Life, and teaches in the publishing program at Ryerson University.~ ~Hadley has traveled as far as Tanzania to lead workshops for children’s book writers and research her books. Back at home, she spends time every day in Toronto’s public spaces, walking her dog and jostling for sidewalk space with the kids who hang out in her neighborhood. She never tells them to move along.

James Leck was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1973. At the time, his hobbies included eating, sleeping and pooping his pants. Since then, much has changed.#He has worked as a high school teacher in Canada, Japan and Kuwait, and has had the good fortune to travel extensively. Some of his favorite stories from his travels include the time he accidentally ordered an entire chicken (and only a chicken) for his dinner in Korea; the time all his clothes, backpack and towel were dragged out to sea by a rogue wave in Guam; and the time he accidentally paid $40 for a bottle of apple juice in Oman. His travels have taught him to expect the unexpected and to roll with the waves life sends you.#Three things influenced him to write the Jack Lime mysteries: Scooby-Doo, Inspector Jacques Clouseau and Sherlock Holmes. However, Jack is based on the hard-boiled detectives of the 1940s and ’50s. James always loved those mysteries because the detectives didn’t solve the crimes through brilliant deduction, but rather through sheer determination and grit.#His latest book, After Dark, is a small salute to the great horror stories and movies he read and watched growing up. Charlie Harker, the hero in After Dark, has a passion for sleeping in, napping and avoiding work at all costs, and James has to admit that these qualities might be based on his own quest for absolute laziness during his summer vacations growing up.#Currently, James lives in Dartmouth with his wife and two children. He still enjoys sleeping and eating but has moved beyond pooping his pants.