Mermaids Never Drown

Zoraida Córdova is Ecuadorian born and New York City raised. She is the award-winning author of the Brooklyn Brujas series and The Vicious Deep trilogy. Her short fiction has appeared in the New York Times bestselling anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, and Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft. She is the co-editor of Vampires Never Get Old, a YA anthology forthcoming from Imprint/Macmillan in fall 2020. When she isn't working on her next novel, she's planning her next adventure.

Natalie C. Parker is the author of Beware the Wild and Behold the Bones and the editor of Three Sides of a Heart: Stories About Love Triangles. She is also the founder of Madcap Retreats and works at her local university coordinating programs on climate science and indigenous communities. She lives on the Kansas prairie with her partner and a requisite number of beasts. Learn more about her at www.nataliecparker.com.

Darcie Little Badger is an award-winning Lipan Apache author with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time Magazine as one of the best 100 fantasy novels of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula and Ignyte Award, as well as a Newbery Honor, and is on the National Book Awards longlist. Darcie lives with her husband in Texas. You can visit her online at darcielittlebadger.com.

Preeti Chhibber is an acclaimed author living in Atlanta, Georgia. She has written for SYFY, Book Riot, Polygon, and Elle, among others. Across prose, comics, and podcasts, she’s written for characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Riddler, and so many more. Her debut YA rom-com, Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot, came out in 2024. When she’s not writing, she spends her time reading a ridiculous amount of YA, jumping into a brand-new fandom, or food-traveling her way through different countries. She’s also the cohost of the Desi Geek Girls and Women of Marvel podcasts, where she geeks out on the regular. You can learn more about Preeti and her work at preetichhibber.com.

Rebecca Coffindaffer (they/she) grew up on Star Wars, Star Trek, fantastical movies and even more fantastical books. They waited a long time for their secret elemental powers to develop, and in the interim, they started writing stories about magic and politics, spaceships, far-off worlds, and people walking away from explosions in slow motion. These days they live in Kansas with their family, surrounded by a lot of books and a lot of tabletop games and one big fuzzy dog. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram, or visit their website at www.rebeccacoffindaffer.com.

Adriana Herrera was born and raised in the Caribbean, but for the last 15 years has let her job (and her spouse) take her all over the world. She loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her people, getting unapologetic happy endings. 

June Hur is a bestselling and Edgar Award-winning author of YA historicals, including The Silence of Bones, The Forest of Stolen Girls, The Red Palace, and A Crane Among Wolves. Born in South Korea, June spent her formative years in the USA, Canada, and South Korea before studying History and Literature at the University of Toronto, and working at the city's public library. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The New York Times, CBC, and KBS. June resides in Toronto with her family and can be spotted writing in coffee shops.

Katherine Locke lives and writes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with their feline overlords and their addiction to chai lattes. They are the author of The Girl with the Red Balloon, a 2018 Sydney Taylor Honor Book and 2018 Carolyn W. Field Honor Book, as well as The Spy with the Red Balloon and This Rebel Heart. They are the coeditor and contributor to This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us, which had three starred reviews and made the Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade of 2021 list, as well as It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories. They also contributed to Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens and Out Now: Queer We Go Again! They are also the author of the picture books Bedtime for Superheroes, What Are Your Words? A Book About Pronouns, and Being Friends with Dragons. They can be found online at katherinelockebooks.com and @bibliogato on Twitter and Instagram.

Julie Murphy is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of young adult and middle grade novels, including Dumplin’ (now a Netflix original film starring Jennifer Aniston). She is also the author of Disney’s reimagining of Cinderella: If the Shoe Fits. Her books have been translated into more than fifteen languages.

She lives in North Texas with her husband, who loves her; her dog, who adores her; and her cats, who tolerate her.

Gretchen Schreiber grew up between the hills of Kansas and the hospitals of Minnesota, but now calls the hills of Los Angeles home. After getting her MFA from USC Film School, she works as a professional bookworm for Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s media company. She is always down to run away to Disneyland or a bookstore.