Karen Good Marable is a writer raised in Prairie View, Texas. Her essays, music journalism, and stories have appeared in several books and publications including The New Yorker, Oxford American, The Bitter Southerner,Seventeen, and Essence. After a lifetime of living in Brooklyn, she and her family now reside in Atlanta.

Tonya Engel is a self-taught painter and children’s book illustrator whose work can be found in many picture books, among them Our Lady of Guadalupe, Because Claudette, Impossible Moon, and the jacket art for Hurricane Child. Her work is inspired by Southern folk artists. Early in her career, she explored abstract painting but soon began to concentrate on figurative form mixed with emotion and expressionistic narrative. Engel lives in Houston, Texas.