Author Bios

Andrea Wang is an award-winning children’s book author whose picture book Watercress, a Caldecott Honor winner, draws on her family’s Chinese immigrant experience to explore identity, memory, and belonging.

Jayati Ghosh is a development economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and co-author of the Meridian Award-winning Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity.

Douglas A. Gentile is a developmental psychologist and professor at Iowa State University who studies the effects of media on children and adolescents. He co-authored Technology’s Child, which won the 2023 Meridian Award for Science and Nature.

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache author and oceanographer whose fantasy novels draw on Indigenous mythology and oral traditions to create vivid, award-winning worlds for young adult readers.

Al Hess is a science fiction author known for writing inclusive, character-driven speculative fiction. His debut novel World Running Down won the 2023 Meridian Award for Science Fiction.

Steve Lydenberg is a pioneer in responsible investing and a founding partner of Domain Impact Management, with more than four decades of experience integrating social and environmental values into investment practice.

Owen Gaffney is a science journalist and sustainability analyst at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and co-author of the Meridian Award-winning Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity.

Lindsay C. Gibson is a clinical psychologist and bestselling author whose work on emotionally immature parenting has helped millions of adults understand and heal from childhood emotional neglect.

Ever Dundas is a Scottish author and academic whose debut novel HellSans won the 2022 Meridian Award for Science Fiction. A lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, Dundas writes speculative fiction that explores otherness, disability, and systemic power with incisive clarity.

Casey McQuiston is an American author whose debut novel Red, White and Royal Blue (2019) became a landmark queer romantic comedy, praised for its wit and warmth and adapted into a film by Amazon Prime Video in 2023.