Lauren Kessler is the author of five works of narrative nonfiction, including Dancing with Rose, Washington Post best seller Clever Girl, Los Angeles Times best seller The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Full Court Press and Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig.  Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O Magazine, Salon, and The Nation.  She is founder and editor of Etude, the online magazine of narrative nonfiction, and directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon.  She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her writer husband, Tom Hager, her three brilliant and faultless children, and a cat that thinks it's a dog.

Virginia Euwer Wolff's family came to Oregon from Pennsylvania and New York state in 1911. She graduated from Smith College and has attended graduate schools in New York, Vermont, North Carolina, and Oregon. She has taught school for more than 20 years in New York, Philadelphia, and Oregon. Among her distinctions are the National Book Award, two Oregon Book Awards, and two Golden Kite awards. She was given the Oregon Library Association's Evelyn Sibley Lampman Award in 2005 for service to the children of Oregon. Her books have all been named ALA Best Books or ALA Notables, sometimes both. Virginia has played the violin since age eight, with a horrifying lapse of about 15 years in early adulthood. The lapse brought to her attention the notion that every child must have music in order to thrive. She plays chamber music year round.

Deborah Hopkinson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts, and a Master’s in Asian Studies from University of Hawaii. In addition to writing, Deborah works full-time as the Director of Foundation Relations at Oregon State University Foundation. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Apples to Oregon has won the Golden Kite Award, Spur Award, and is an American Library Association Notable Book. To learn more about Deborah, visit her web site at www.deborahhopkinson.com and her blog at deborahhopkinson.blogspot.com.