Love & Profanity

Geoff Herbach is the author of Hooper and the award-winning Stupid Fast series, as well as Fat Boy vs. the Cheerleaders. His books have been given the Cybils Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and the Minnesota Book Award, selected for the Junior Library Guild, and listed among the year’s best by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and many state library associations. In the past, he produced radio comedy shows and toured rock clubs telling weird stories. Geoff teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He lives in a log cabin with a tall wife. You can find him online at www.geoffherbach.com.

Clint Edwards hasn't crapped his pants since freshman year, but tomorrow is another day. You can read more about Clint at No Idea What I'm Doing: A Daddy Blog. It's been featured on Good Morning America, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. But that's not the real reason to read it. The real reason is that it will give you a glimpse into the steamy world of adult married life with children, and because he sometimes writes about farts.

Carrie Mesrobian is an instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Her debut novel, Sex & Violence, was called one of the best books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly and was a finalist for the American Library Association's William C. Morris Award for best debut young adult novel. A native Minnesotan, she lives with her husband, daughter, and dog.

Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. She is the award-winning author of Magical Realism for Non-Believers, What If a Fish, Meet Me Halfway, and The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore. She lives with her family in Minneapolis. Find out more at AnikaFajardo.com.

Pete Hautman is the author of National Book Award–winning novel Godless, Sweetblood, Hole in the Sky, Stone Cold, The Flinkwater Factor, The Forgetting Machine, and Mr. Was, which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, as well as several adult novels. He lives in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Visit him at PeteHautman.com.

 

Trisha Speed Shaskan has written more than forty books for children, including the picture book Punk Skunks, illustrated by her husband Stephen Shaskan. Trisha lives in Minneapolis with her husband, cat, and dog.

Born in Busan, South Korea, Patti Kim immigrated to the United States on Christmas, 1974. Convinced at the age of five that she was a writer, she scribbled gibberish all over the pages of her mother’s Korean-English dictionary and got in big trouble for it. But that didn’t stop her from writing. The author of I’m Ok; It’s Girls Like You, Mickey; A Cab Called Reliable; and Here I Am, Patti lives in University Park, Maryland, with her husband, two daughters, and a ferocious terrier. Visit her online at PattiKimWrites.com.

ALISON MCGHEE’s best-selling novel Shadow Baby was a Today Show Book Club pick, and her picture book for adults, Someday, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, has three grown children, and lives a semi-nomadic life in Minnesota and California.

Dr. Da Chen is currently an ARC (Australian Research Council) DECRA (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award) fellow at Department of Infrastructure Engineering, the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at School of Civil Engineering, the University of Queensland, where he obtained his PhD degree in June 2018. He worked as a research fellow at MFM and ISMD, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. He will shortly join School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW (University of New South Wales) Sydney, as a lecturer. Dr. Chen has an interdisciplinary research background across structural, material, and mechanical engineering with a focus on the advanced composite structural forms for various end-user applications, such as novel lightweight non-uniform foam components, graphene reinforced nanocomposites, vibration absorbers, concrete columns, and offshore fish cages. His study promotes the development of functionally graded porous structures and has been widely acknowledged. His research achievements include 6 Highly Cited Papers (top performing 1%), 2330 Web of Science citations, and 7.72 for Field-Weighted Citation Impact (2017-2021, SciVal), as of January 2023.

Jessica Gunderson grew up in the small town of Washburn, North Dakota. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of North Dakota and an MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has written more than one hundred books for young readers. Her book President Lincoln's Killer and the America He Left Behind won a 2018 Eureka! Nonfiction Children's Book Silver Award. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Steve Brezenoff is the author of the young adult novels The Absolute Value of -1, which won the IPPY Gold Medal for young adult fiction, and Brooklyn, Burning, which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book, was a Best Fiction for Young Adults selection by the American Library Association, and won the ForeWord Book of the Year Gold Medal for young adult fiction. Born on Long Island, Steve now lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Beth, and their son and daughter, Sam and Etta. His main is a Blood Elf monk, but he's been known to run a Night Elf priest from time to time.

Jon Scieszka is the National Ambassador for Children's Literature emeritus and the bestselling author of more than twenty-five books for kids, including The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, Robot Zot!, and the Time Warp Trio series. Jon founded Guys Read to encourage a passion for reading among young boys, with the philosophy that boys love to read most when they are reading things they love. A former elementary school teacher, Jon lives in Brooklyn with his family. For more great books, more great facts, and more about your favorite authors, head over to www.guysread.com. You'll be glad you did.