Adam Berg is a real human boy and not a figment of his dog’s imagination. He started his career in sketch comedy, spent six years writing and acting for Studio C, and now works for JK Studios. Feed him cookies, please.

Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia. She also low key practices Hoodoo and high key devours books (150 or so a year keep her well fed). In her spare time she enjoys pretending it is Halloween everyday, organizing her crystals, watching K-dramas and accidentally scrolling through TikTok for 3 hours at a time. She believes in ghosts and she believes in you.

Ari Tison is a Bribri (Indigenous Costa Rican) American and African descended poet and storyteller. Her poems and short works have been published in Yellow Medicine Review, The Under Review, Rock & Sling, and POETRY's first ever edition for children. She was the winner of the 2018 Vaunda Micheaux Nelson award for a BIPOC writer with Lerner Publishing. She currently serves as the mentor coordinator for Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop where she gets to support and bring incarcerated voices into the world. Saints of the Household is her debut novel.

Bryan Young (he/they) works across many different media. His work as a writer and producer has been called "filmmaking gold" by The New York Times. He's been a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider magazine, SYFY, /Film, and more. In 2014, he wrote the critically acclaimed history book, A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. He co-authored Robotech: The Macross Saga RPG has written two books in the BattleTech Universe: Honor's Gauntlet and A Question of Survival. He teaches writing for Writer’s Digest, Script Magazine, and at the University of Utah.

Donna Milakovic and Debbie Hibbert are YA writers, journalists, and partners in crime. They have countless hours of interviews (and some informal interrogation) experience. In their spare time, they enjoy exploring graveyards, visiting hell gates and eating gelato. Donna has studied intelligence gathering techniques for her Masters in Business Administration and Debbie's debut YA mystery novel is coming soon.

Elizabeth Lowham has a BA in English from BYU-Idaho. She has loved books all her life and started writing seriously at age fifteen. Apart from reading and writing, her hobbies include sewing, sketching, eating, and other -ing verbs. Plus yoga. Her debut novel, Beauty Reborn, releases in May.

Elly Swartz is the acclaimed author of five middle grade novels: Finding Perfect, Smart Cookie, Give and Take, Dear Student and Hidden Truths (coming 2023). All of her books reflect her commitment to raising awareness about mental health. Swartz studied psychology at Boston University and received a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. Swartz resides in Massachusetts.

Emma Nelson is the founder of Owl Hollow Press, a small traditional publishing house with multiple award-winning titles. She has an M.A. in Literature and Folklore and has taught university writing classes. As an author, her non-fiction is published in Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television (Wayne State University Press), Routledge Companion to Fairy-Tale Cultures and Media (Routledge), and Dirty Drafting: Fast Draft Your Way into a Finished Novel and a Consistent Writing Habit.

Frank L. Cole was born into a family of southern storytellers and wrote his first book at age eight. Highly superstitious and gullible to a fault, Frank will believe in any creepy story you tell him, especially ones involving ghosts and Big Foot. Currently, along with his wife and three children, he resides in the shadow of a majestic western mountain range, which is most likely haunted. Potion Masters The Seeking Serum is Frank’s 12th published book.

Heather Clark is the author of LEMON DROP FALLS. She lives in Utah, with her husband and three children who inspire the books she writes. After dealing with her own childhood anxiety and OCD, Heather is passionate about representing neurodiverse children powerfully in fiction. Heather is the cofounder of MG Book Party podcast and program director for Tween Author Boot Camp. When not working, you’ll find her camping, knitting, or board gaming. Learn more at www.HeatherClarkBooks.com.

J Scott Savage is the author of 20 published novels, including Farworld, Case File 13, Mysteries of Cove, The Lost Wonderland Diaries, and Graysen Foxx Treasure Hunter releasing in Spring 2023. His novels have received many awards and recognitions including Amazon Book of the Month, Barnes and Noble Select Book, Jr. Library Guild, and others. He is represented by Michael Bourret of Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret.

Jared Quan is a video game addict and writer published in genres from Spy-Thriller to Horror/Supernatural, to Fantasy-Comedy. His work includes Ezekial’s Gun, Changing Wax, Classified, Pathological Passion, (Futuristic/Romance/Steampunk, which he co-wrote with his wife), Unclassified, and Prepped (a story in the Apocalypse Utah anthology).

Jayrod P. Garrett longs for a world in which all of us are treated as humans. Currently he’s studying at the University of Nevada - Reno seeking an MFA in Fiction. He's published poetry and essays in local venues and teaches Theater, Creative Writing, and Language Arts at Hillcrest Junior High.

Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jeff Wheeler took an early retirement from his career at Intel in 2014 to write full-time. He is a husband, father of five, and a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jennifer Jenkins is the author of eight published novels including A Necessary Madness (2022), Teen Writer's Guide: Your Road Map to Writing (2020), The Lingering Sea novels (2020), and the Nameless trilogy (2018). She works as the Executive Director and co-founder of TABC and teaches creative writing at Utah Valley University. In her spare time, she pretends to have spare time.

Jennifer Nielsen writes books, eats chocolate, and takes walks in the mountains (sometimes all at once!). She lives in Northern Utah with her family, and is thinking about getting a goat.

Jessica Day George is the NYT Bestselling author of over a dozen middle grade and YA fantasy books. She lives with her one husband, three kids, and one dog, and loves books, knitting, books, movies, books, dark chocolate, books, and travel.

Jo Schaffer Layton is a YA author, speaker, Taekwondo black belt, screenplay writer and a founding member of the nonprofit organization that created Teen Author Boot Camp. She wrote the Stanley and Hazel trilogy and Badlands (Fall 2023).

Julie Wright is a two-time Whitney Award winner. Her books have received several starred reviews and have been listed in the American Library Association’s top ten romances of the year.
She loves writing, reading, traveling, snorkeling, hiking, playing with her family, and watching her husband make dinner.

Kaela Rivera is the award-winning author of the Cece Rios series. She grew up reading the folktales of her Mexican-American and British parents in the forests of Tennessee, but now she writes about them from the soaring mountains of Utah. When she’s not crafting stories, she’s working as a managing editor for a marketing company—or secretly doodling her characters in the margins of her notebook. Visit her at kaelarivera.com.

Kathryn Purdie is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the BONE CRIER’S MOON duology and BURNING GLASS series. Kathryn has taught writing classes at Storymakers, Futurescapes, previous TABCs, and was a keynote speaker for Young Authors Academy. She loves acting and writing songs for her characters.

KayLynn Flanders graduated with a degree in English and editing, and spent many years as a freelance editor before becoming a writer. Her award-winning YA fantasy novel, Shielded, and its sequel, Untethered, were published by Delacorte Press/PRH. KayLynn loves reading, writing, traveling, and volleyball, and thinks there’s nothing better than a spur-of-the-moment road trip.

Marina Scott was born and raised behind the Iron Curtain in Vilnius, Lithuania. She graduated from a local university with a Master’s degree in library science, but a short stint in a Soviet library changed her mind about being a librarian in the U.S.S.R. She immigrated to the United States in 2000 and now resides in Salt Lake City. You can find her on Twitter @NinkaSLC and Instagram @Marina_V_Scott

Roseanne A. Brown is an immigrant from the West African nation of Ghana and a graduate of the University of Maryland, where she completed the Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her debut novel A Song of Wraiths and Ruin was an instant New York Times Bestseller, an Indie Bestseller, and received six starred reviews. She has worked with Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney among other publishers. You can visit her online at roseanneabrown.com or on Instagram or Twitter at @rosiesrambles.

Sandra Tayler is the publisher and writer for Schlock Mercenary, X-treme Dungeon Mastery, and Hold on to Your Horses. She has a cartoonist husband Howard Tayler, also a house, garden, three cats, and a scrub jay who comes and yells at her through the window until she supplies peanuts.

Sara B. Larson is the best-selling and critically acclaimed author of the YA fantasy DEFY trilogy (DEFY, IGNITE, and ENDURE), the DARK BREAKS THE DAWN duology, and the SISTERS OF SHADOW AND LIGHT duology (TorTeen/Macmillan). She can’t remember a time when she didn’t write books—although she now uses a computer instead of a Little Mermaid notebook. Sara lives in Utah with her husband, their four children, and their Maltese, Loki. She writes in brief snippets throughout the day and the quiet hours when most people are sleeping. Her husband claims she should have a degree in “the art of multitasking.” When she’s not mothering or writing, you can often find her at the gym repenting for her sugar addiction.

Our ambassadors are TABC graduates who have gone through the program as teens and know what a life changer it can be. They know the ins and outs of TABC and are here to help facilitate classes and help you make the most of your day! Look for these superheroes at the conference!

Tyler Whitesides is the author of JANITORS, THE WISHMAKERS, MAGIC'S MOST WANTED, and the KINGDOM OF GRIT trilogy. When he isn't writing, he loves being on stage, woodworking, and playing D&D with other real grown-ups.

Born in Dover, Delaware, Lisa Bickmore grew up living all over the United States and in Japan. She is the author of three books of poems: Haste (Signature Books, 1994), flicker, which won the 2014 Antivenom Prize from Elixir Press, and Ephemerist (Red Mountain Press, June 2017).

Her poetry, scholarship, and video work have been published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Tar River Poetry; Sugar House Review; SouthWord; Caketrain; Hunger Mountain Review; Terrain.org; Bite-Size Poems project (Utah Division of Arts & Museums); Quarterly West; The Moth; MappingSLC.org; Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets; and elsewhere. In 2015, her poem 'Eidolon' was awarded the Ballymaloe International Poetry Award.

She earned a B.A. and an M.A. from Brigham Young University. She is recently retired from her position as a Professor of English at Salt Lake Community College, where she was the recipient of the SLCC Foundation Teaching Excellence Award in 2006. She taught writing of all sorts, as well as publication studies, and is one of the founders of the SLCC Publication Center.

​In 2019, she founded the nonprofit Lightscatter Press, which published its first book in April of 2021. Read about its mission of multimodal literary publishing, calls for submission, and the shop​. You can support Lightscatter Press here.

Wendy Morkel is a researcher, author, editor, therapist, lifelong learner, and mom. Most notably, Wendy is on an adventure as a therapist for inmates at the Utah State Prison. She once co-authored a self-help book that sometimes reads like a novel, and she secretly dreams of writing fiction.