2023 YA & Middle Grades Authors
More authors will be added as we get closer to the festival.
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Johnny Cassidy is a disability advocate with a passion for comedic and mental health-themed stories. In 2020 he made an anti-bullying feature film ‘Authenticity: the Musical’. After positive reception, he adapted the story to the stage at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it received five sold-out performances as well as the Encore award. He expanded the musical to a company that creates mental health-related shows for high schools. As he continues adding musicals to his repertoire, he focuses daily on writing middle-grade novellas while working as a Nanny with kids on the spectrum.
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A Jersey girl by birth, former Delaware middle-school language arts teacher, Kate Szegda credits her mother with engendering a love of history. Family stories about her grandfather’s drug store in Highland Park, NJ during the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 sparked Szegda’s curiosity and led to writing her debut, award-winning novel, Pharmacy Girl.
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Until Hollywood calls, Charlotte Bennardo lives in NJ with her husband and a cat who thinks the printer is his bed. Her works include the middle grade Evolution Revolution trilogy: Simple Machines, Simple Plans, and Simple Lessons. She is also the co-author of young adult books Blonde Ops and the Sirenz series: Sirenz, Sirenz Back In Fashion. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Beware the Little White Rabbit and Scare Me To Sleep. She’s written for magazines and newspapers, and has given presentations and workshops at NJ SCBWI conferences and other venues. Now that she's finished her MFA in Creative Writing, she’s back at work writing sci fi, historical, fantasy, paranormal, horror, romance, and time travel novels.
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Eric Smith is a literary agent and Young Adult author from Elizabeth, New Jersey. As an agent with P.S. Literary, he’s worked on New York Times bestselling and award-winning books. His recent novels include the YALSA Best Books for Young Readers selection Don’t Read the Comments (Inkyard Press, 2020), You Can Go Your Own Way (Inkyard Press, 2021), and the anthologies Battle of the Bands (Candlewick, 2021) and First-Year Orientation (Candlewick, 2023), both co-edited with award-winning author Lauren Gibaldi. In 2022 Abrams published Jagged Little Pill: The Novel, which was written in collaboration with Alanis Morissette, Academy award-winner Diablo Cody, and Glen Ballard, and is an adaptation of the Grammy and Tony award winning musical.
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DIANNE K. SALERNI is the author of YA and middle grade novels, including Eleanor, Alice, & the Roosevelt Ghosts and Jadie in Five Dimensions, both Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections, and the state award nominated Eighth Day Series. Her eighth book, The Carrefour Curse, is a spine-chilling mystery inspired by Dianne’s love of all things gothic, but especially the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows. Dianne was a Pennsylvania public school teacher for 25 years before leaving the profession to spend time hanging around creepy cemeteries, attending ghost hunting classes, and climbing 2000 year-old pyramids in the name of book research. In her spare time, she volunteers at her local animal rescue shelter, walking dogs and serving the needs of the feline overlords.
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Jordan Sonnenblick was a public school teacher for fourteen years, but always dreamed of being a writer, so in 2003 he sat down and started his first young adult novel, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, which was published by Scholastic in 2005. Jordan was as surprised as anybody when the book took off: it received several starred reviews, was in the American Library Association’s Teens’ Top Ten List, sold over 900,000 copies, and has been translated into twelve foreign languages. Jordan followed Drums with six more acclaimed books for teens: Notes from the Midnight Driver, Zen and the Art of Faking It, After Ever After, Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, Are You Experienced?, and Falling Over Sideways. Jordan has also written four novels for middle-grade readers: The Dodger and Me trilogy and The Secret Sheriff of Sixth Grade. Jordan’s newest books, The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell and The Boy Who Failed Dodgeball, are memoirs of his experiences as a trouble-prone preteen.
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Darlene Beck Jacobson is a former teacher and speech therapist who has loved writing since she was a girl. She is the author of the middle grade historical novel WHEELS OF CHANGE (Creston 2014) which is a 2015 Notable Social-Studies Trade Book from the Children’s Book Council (CBC), A 2015 Mighty Girl Pick, and The Grateful American Book Prize Honorable mention for 2015. Her middle grade novel-in-verse WISHES, DARES, AND HOW TO STAND UP TO A BULLY (Creston 2020) is a Notable Verse Novel for 2021 from the CBC.
Darlene lives and writes her stories in New Jersey. When she’s not writing , she enjoys baking and eating pies, dancing to the oldies in the supermarket, and discovering new things. She’s caught many fish, but never asked one to grant her a wish. She’s a firm believer in wishes coming true, so she tries to be careful what she wishes for. Her blog features recipes, activities, crafts, articles on nature, book reviews, and interviews with children’s book authors and illustrators.
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Jiordan Castle is the author of Disappearing Act, a true story. Her writing has appeared in HuffPost, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. She is a contributor to the LA-based food and culture magazine Compound Butter. Originally from New York, she received her BA in English from the University of San Francisco and her MFA in Poetry from Hunter College. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their dog.
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Sierra Isley is a young adult author originally from Atlanta, Georgia, but currently based in Philadelphia. She graduated from Florida State University in 2021 with a degree in Editing, Writing and Media. Outside of writing, her passions include filmmaking, social media communications and drinking chai lattes. Her debut, a YA romance titled IN THE RING, releases September 15, 2023 with The Little Press and Blackstone Audio.
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Angeli Rafer is a Filipino American illustrator and comic artist based in the diner capital of the world (a.k.a. New Jersey). She is a self-taught digital artist, with a passion for telling stories about everyday magic -- from cooking and first crushes to cute animals and bad puns. Her work also appears in several anthologies: Hellcat Press's Screams Heard Round the World, Dark Lady Returns, and the Sequential Artist Workshop's Rhythms. Her first graphic novel, Ghosts Don’t Eat Potato Chips (The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids #3), will be available in September 2023!
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Yvonne Ventresca’s YA debut, Pandemic (winner of an SCBWI Crystal Kite), continues to be a timely read about surviving a widespread deadly virus. Her other published works include Black Flowers, White Lies and several short stories for middle grade and teen readers. Yvonne holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her website features resources for teen writers and blogs about creative productivity.
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Maria E. Andreu is the author of Julieta and the Romeos (Balzer + Bray, 2023), and Love in English (Balzer + Bray, 2021), an Indie Next Pick and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Teen Vogue, Newsweek, The Washington Post, NJ.com, and the Newark Star Ledger.
Her debut young adult novel, The Secret Side of Empty is a Junior Library Guild Selection, a National Indie Excellence Book Award winner, an International Latino Book Awards Finalist and has been called “captivating” by School Library Journal. Maria is Latinx and Argentinian-American and currently lives in New Jersey. Her work has been informed by her experiences as a formerly undocumented, non-native English speaker and immigrant to the U.S.