Obviously the first two authors that will be at Yall Fest will be the festival coordinators Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, authors of The Beautiful Creatures Novels.  (Margie is also author of the new series Icons coming out 2013)

KAMI GARCIA 

I grew up outside of Washington DC, but it always felt like I had one foot in the South. By the time I was thirteen, my family moved in with my grandmother and great-grandmother, and we had four generations of women living under the same roof – two born and bred in a small town in North Carolina. I grew up drinking sweet tea, eating vegetables cooked with a little bacon grease, and biscuits made from scratch. 

I wore tons of black, a lot of rings, and spent hours writing in my journals. By the time I graduated high school, I had probably filled a hundred of them and gotten my friends more than a few dates with my poetry. That was the beginning of writing for me.

I’m fascinated by anything paranormal and believe in lots of things “normal” people don’t. I’m very superstitious, would never sleep in a room with the number 13 on the door, and I wear lots of charms. When I’m not writing, I can usually be found watching disaster movies, listening to Soundgarden, or drinking Diet Coke.

I have an MA in education, and taught in the DC area until I moved to Los Angeles, where I was a teacher & Reading Specialist for twelve years. In addition to teaching, I was an artist in mixed media and led fantasy book groups for children and teens. I have learned more from my students than I ever learned in school. I still live in LA with my husband, son, daughter, and our dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

MARGARET STOHL

Margaret Stohl is the author of the forthcoming YA novel ICONS, the first book in the Icons Series – as well as the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Indie-Bound and internationally bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels with Kami Garcia, which have been translated into 28 languages and 37 countries and optioned for film by Warner Brothers.

A longtime veteran of the videogame industry, Margaret’s work includes – to name a few – Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Dune 2000, The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow, Defender, The Sopranos, Slave Zero, Apocalypse, Zork Nemesis, Zork Grand Inquisitor, Spycraft, Command & Conquer: Red Alert Retaliation, and Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.

A graduate of Amherst College, Margaret earned a MA in English from Stanford University, and completed classwork for a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. Margaret was a teaching assistant in Romantic Poetry at Stanford, and in Film Studies at Yale. She attended the Creative Writing Program of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, where she was mentored by the Scottish poet George MacBeth.

Margaret loves traveling the world with her daughters, who are nationally and internationally ranked epee fencers, and living in Santa Monica with her husband and two bad beagles, Kirby and Zelda.