Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, memoirs, and picture books, including The Surrender Tree, All the Way to Havana, Bravo!, Drum Dream Girl, and Dancing Hands. Awards include a Newbery Honor, Pura Belpré Medals, Golden Kite Award, Walter Honor, Jane Addams Award, PEN U.S.A., and NSK Neustadt Prize, among others. Margarita served as the national 2017-2019 Young People’s Poet Laureate. Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives on the island. She studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing, and now lives in central California.
Juliet Menéndez is a Guatemalan American author and illustrator living between Guatemala City, Paris, and New York. While working as a bilingual teacher in New York City’s public schools, Juliet noted the need for more books that depicted children like the ones in her classrooms. She studied design and illustration in Paris and now spends her days with her watercolors and notebook.