CCRCE’s TRCA Committee has shortlisted ten books for the 2014 Teen Reader’s Choice Award. The award winner will be announced on Tuesday, May 20th.

Meet the authors of the ten books shortlisted for the 2014 Teen Reader’s Choice Award. This year’s contending novels include an unforgettable story about two misfits in love; a fantastical fairy-tale packed with allusions to Grimm Brothers’ tales; and an unforgettable true story about a young woman who dared to make a difference.

Rick Yancey author of The 5th Wave

Rick was born in Miami, Florida and three days later his new parents drove 225 miles from their hometown of Lakeland to meet him. Their first impression must have been all right, because they decided to give him a home.

Rick loved to read from an early age. Dr. Seuss, Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes and Lord of the Rings are among his favourites. When he isn’t writing or thinking about writing or traveling the country talking about writing, Rick is hanging out with his family.

Robyn Schneider author of The Beginning of Everything

Robyn Schneider is a writer, actor, and online personality. She is a graduate of Columbia University, where she studied creative writing, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where she studied medical ethics. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Steve Sheinkin author of Bomb: The Race to Build – And Steal – The World’s Most Powerful Weapon

Steve Sheinkin was born in Brooklyn, NY, and lived with his family in Mississippi and Colorado before moving back to New York and settling in the suburbs north of New York City. As a kid his favorite books were action stories and outdoor adventures.

After attending Syracuse University Sheinkin moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for the National Audubon Society. After an unsuccessful stint in the movie business, Steve moved to Brooklyn and started working for an educational publishing company. He wrote his last textbook in 2008. His first non-textbook history book was King George: What Was His Problem? – full of all the stories about the American Revolution that he was never allowed to put into textbooks.

Steve currently lives with his wife, Rachel, and their two young kids in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Rainbow Rowell author of Eleanor & Park

Rowell was a columnist and ad copywriter at the Omaha World-Herald from 1995 to 2012. After leaving this position, she began working for an ad agency and writing what would become her first published novel, Attachments. The novel, a contemporary romantic comedy about a company’s IT guy who falls in love with a woman whose email he has been monitoring, was published in 2011.

In 2012, Rowell completed the first draft of her young adult novel Fangirl for National Novel Writing Month. In 2013, Rowell published Fangirl and Eleanor & Park.

When she’s not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books and planning Disney World trips. She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

David Levithan author of Every Day

Levithan was born in Short Hills, New Jersey. At nineteen, he received an internship at Scholastic Corporation where he began working on The Baby-sitters Club series. Levithan, who still works for Scholastic as an editorial director, is the founding editor of PUSH, a young-adult imprint of Scholastic Press focusing on new voices and new authors.

Levithan, whose first book was published in 2003, lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Tom McNeal author of Far Far Away

Tom holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Irvine, and has been a Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. He was raised in Santa Ana, California, and spent his summers (and later taught school) in northwest Nebraska, where much of his fiction is set. He lives with Laura and their two sons, Sam and Hank, near San Diego, California.

Malala Yousafzai author of I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

Malala Yousafzai was born in 1997 in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. In her short lifetime, she has already experienced devastating changes in her country, which has been transformed from a once peaceful land to a hotbed of terrorism. Malala, who now lives in Birmingham, England, says she has been given a second life, which she intends to devote to the good of the people and her belief that all girls everywhere deserve an education.

Patricia McCormick author of Never Fall Down

McCormick graduated from Rosemont College in 1974–1978, earned a MS from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1985–1986, and a MFA from the New School in 1999. She currently lives in New York City where she frequently contributes to several magazines and newspapers.

Her books rely heavily on research and interviews. To write her novel Sold, McCormick traveled to the brothels of India and the mountain villages of Nepal to interview survivors of sex trafficking. For her book Never Fall Down, she spent a month in Cambodia with a survivor of the Khmer Rouge Genocide.

Prudence Shen author of Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong; illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks

Prudence Shen is a writer and caffeine addict who pays rent in New York even though she mostly lives in airports. Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is her first book. You can follow Prudence on Twitter and Tumblr.

Faith Erin Hicks is a writer and artist in Halifax, Canada. Her first two graphic novels, Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere, were published by SLG Publishing. She has illustrated First Second’s Brain Camp and wrote and illustrated 2012’s Friends With Boys, a coming of age story with supernatural elements and a musical about zombies. Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is her most recent graphic novel.

Rachel Hartman author of Seraphina

Rachel earned a degree in comparative literature but eschewed graduate school in favour of bookselling and drawing comics. Born in Kentucky, she has lived in Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, England, and Japan. She now lives with her family in Vancouver.

Seraphina is her debut novel.