Jane Kurtz is an award-winning author of more than 40 books for children, faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, volunteer creative director of Ready Set Go Bilingual Books for Ethiopia, and winner of IBBY’s I-read Global Reading Promoter Award. She spent most of her childhood in Ethiopia. She’s published picture books and novels, fiction and nonfiction and spoken about the power of reading all across the U.S. and in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Now she lives in Portland, Oregon where she was born.