About Us

April Halprin Wayland is the author of five picture books, a young adult novel, and an award-winning CD. Her newest picture book, New Year at the Pier—A Rosh Hashanah Story (Dial), won the Sydney Taylor Book Award Gold Medal for best Jewish picture book of the year. Her novel in poems, Girl Coming in for a Landing (Knopf) won Pennsylvania State University’s Lee Bennett Hopkins Honor Award for Poetry and the Myra Cohn Livingston Award for Poetry. Her CD, which includes five stories, 17 poems and a fiddle tune (which she plays), won NAPPA’s Gold Award; her poems appear frequently in Cricket Magazine and in numerous anthologies. She is co-founder of Authors and Illustrators for Children and also the Children’s Authors Network, has taught in over 400 schools in the U.S., France, Italy, England, Germany, and Poland, and has been an instructor for UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program for over a decade. For more, visit her website. (Photo credit: Webb Burns.)

Carmela Martino began writing her first children’s novel, Rosa, Sola (Candlewick Press), while working on her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.  The novel received a starred review from Booklist magazine and was named to their list of “Top Ten First Novels for Youth:  2006.” Her most recent credit is the humorous short story, “Big Z, Cammi, and Me,” in the middle-grade anthology, I Fooled You: Ten Stories of Tricks, Jokes, and Switcheroos (Candlewick Press), edited by Johanna Hurwitz. In addition to publishing stories and poems for children and teens, Carmela has worked as a freelance journalist. Her articles and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Writer’s Digest, and other newspapers and magazines. She has taught adult writing workshops at the College of DuPage for over ten years. She also teaches children’s writing classes at the Hinsdale Center for the Arts. For more, visit her website. (Photo credit: JamieLynn Photography.)

Esther Hershenhorn’s newest title is S is for Story: A Writer's Alphabet (Sleeping Bear Press). Her other titles include Chicken Soup By Heart (Simon & Schuster), a Sydney Taylor Book Award medalist, and three books published by Holiday House: the picture books Fancy That and There Goes Lowell's Party! and the humorous middle-grade novel, The Confe$$Ion$ and $Ecret$ of Howard J. Fingerhut, a Crown Award nominee and Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. A former elementary teacher, Esther now teaches Writing for Children at the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio and Chicago’s Newberry Library as well as coaches writers of all ages to help them tell their stories. She customizes K-8 writing workshops that address the Six Traits of Writing, as well as specific curriculum, district, and Publishing Institute needs. She recently served as a consultant to the Chicago Public Schools, helping to develop an authorship-based program. For more, visit her website.

Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College and is the author of five novels, including Mind Games (Houghton Mifflin). She writes for a soap opera by day when she is not busy teaching, freelancing, driving the carpool, or changing diapers. She is married to an amazing sixth grade teacher and is mother to two very busy preschoolers and two very ornery cats. For more, visit her website.

JoAnn Early Macken's newest rhyming picture book is Baby Says, “Moo!” (Disney-Hyperion). Waiting Out the Storm (Candlewick Press) , her previous book, won an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Book Award in two categories, Preschool Years and Early School Years. Her nonfiction picture book Flip, Float, Fly: Seeds on the Move (Holiday House) was included in the Kansas State Reading Circle 2009 Recommended Reading List and received the Growing Good Kids - Excellence in Children's Literature Award from the American Horticultural Society and the National Junior Master Gardener Program. JoAnn has also written poems, articles for writers, and more than one hundred nonfiction books for educational publishers. She earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College, and she teaches at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She speaks about poetry and writing to children and adults at schools, libraries, and conferences. For more, visit her website.

Mary Ann Rodman has published four picture books and two middle-grade novels. Her first picture book, My Best Friend (Viking), won the Ezra Jack Keats and Charlotte Zolotow Awards. Her middle-grade historical novel, Yankee Girl (Farrar Straus Giroux) has been nominated for nine state book awards, and was named a VOYA Top Shelf Fiction as well as an NCSS Best Trade Book. Her most recent title, Surprise Soup (Viking), received a starred review from Booklist. For several years, she has conducted Young Writers' Workshops and camps at the Margaret Mitchell House Literary Center in Atlanta. For more, visit her website.