Facing the Past: Middle Grade Novels

Dylan Meconis is a cartoonist, writer, and illustrator who created the graphic novels Family Man, Bite Me!, The Long Con, and Outfoxed,which was nominated for a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award. Her most recent book is Queen of the Sea. She lives with her wife in Portland, Oregon.

Renée Watson is the New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author of the novels Some Places More Than Others, Watch Us Rise, co-written with Ellen Hagan, Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, and two picture books: Harlem's Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Renée is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts. She lives in New York City.

New York Times Bestselling author and self-proclaimed giraffe suspicioner, Heidi Schulz, lives in Salem, Oregon with her husband, their teen daughter, a terrible little dog, and several dozen dust bunnies. Her debut novel for middle grade readers, Hook’s Revenge, published by Disney•Hyperion, is a New York Times Bestseller, a Bank Street Best book, among the New York Public Library’s Top 100 Titles for Children in 2014, a Scripp’s National Spelling Bee book club selection, and an OCTE Oregon Spirit Honor Book. A sequel, Hook’s Revenge: The Pirate Code, was published in 2015. Bloomsbury Kids published her picture book debut, Giraffes Ruin Everything, in August 2016. Her short story for children, The Day the Puddles Stomped Back, can be found in Oregon Reads Aloud, an anthology to benefit S.M.A.R.T. (Start Making A Reader Today). Heidi lies to children for fun and profit. Visit her online at heidischulzbooks.com.