Julie Murphy
A former librarian, Julie Murphy is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for all ages, including Dumplin’ (now a film on Netflix and one of TIME Magazine's 100 Best YA Books of All Time), Dear Sweet Pea, and If The Shoe Fits. She is also the co-author of A Merry Little Meet Cute and A Holly Jolly Ever After with Sierra Simone.
Julie travels the world sharing her books and message of fierce body positivity to audiences of all types. Across her various social media platforms, Julie has over 80k followers as well as an active newsletter list. You can learn more about Julie at juliemurphywrites.com.
John Cusick and Mary Kole
John Cusick is a Senior Vice President and literary agent at Folio Literary Management. For the past twelve years John has represented a diverse list of award winners and New York Times bestsellers, as well as being a creative lead on multiple YA titles, and his own original YA novels and middle-grade duology.
Mary Kole is a former literary agent at Andrea Brown Literary Agency and has been providing consulting and developmental editing services since 2013 as founder of the Good Story Company. She has developed content like the Good Story Podcast, Story Mastermind, and Good Story Learning, and ghostwritten for Manuscript Studio. Her book Writing Irresistible Kidlit (Penguin Random House) is a primer on craft of writing for young readers.
In 2020, Mary and John partnered to create Upswell Media, an intellectual property development company. Together, they have worked behind the scenes to develop projects for MTV Books, INKubator Entertainment, Wasabi Entertainment, and others.
