Amber Padilla is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Oakland, CA and holds an MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts. The Secret Garden on 81st Street: A Modern Graphic Retelling of The Secret Garden is Amber’s debut graphic novel. She is also the author/illustrator of the forthcoming YA graphic novel Sugar Coated. At her current day job she hobnobs with Snoopy and the Peanuts gang over at Charles Schulz Creative Associates. When she’s not drawing or crafting (current crafting obsession: sewing), she enjoys snuggling with her cat, and spending time with her husband, family, and friends

Luis Manriquez is a family doctor in Spokane, Washington. His professional ambition is to transform medicine into a practice of social justice. As a medical student, he co-founded the Health Equity Circle, a network of inter-professional student groups focused on using community organizing to address health equity on campus and in the community. He is a co-founder of Spokane Street Medicine and is the Director of Community Health Equity at the WSU Elson S Floyd College of Medicine. Luis originally studied documentary film-making and loves comics as both a personal passion and a hammer to shape the world.