Kwame Mbalia (Author) Kwame Mbalia is a husband, father, andNew York Times best-selling author of the TristanStrong series, for which he received a CorettaScott King Author Honor award for Tristan StrongPunches a Hole in the Sky. Kwame also cowrote LastGate of the Emperor with Prince Joel Makonnen andedited the instant New York Times best seller BlackBoy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood. Kwamelives with his wife and children near Raleigh,North Carolina, where he is currently working onseveral projects-including a new middle gradeseries-and cultivating cutting-edge dad jokes.?www.KwameMbalia.comNikkolas Smith (Illustrator) Nikkolas Smith is an Artivist, picturebook author, and Hollywood film illustrator. Heis the author-illustrator of The Artivist, The GoldenGirls of Rio, and My Hair Is Poofy & That's Okay. Healso illustrated I Am Ruby Bridges, Black Panther:Wakanda Forever: The Courage to Dream, That Flag,and the New York Times best-selling The 1619Project: Born on the Water. Many of Nikkolas's viraland globally published sketches are included in hisbook Sunday Sketch: The Art of Nikkolas. Nikkolasspeaks on his Artivism and leads digital paintingworkshops around the world. Born in Houston,Texas, Nikkolas lives in Los Angeles, California.www.NIKKOLAS.art