Four notable debuts from the fall season.

Fall 2014 Flying Starts: Atia Abawi

Atia Abawi’s desire to be both a journalist and a novelist had early roots.

Fall 2014 Flying Starts: Mike Curato

At the 2012 SCBWI Midwinter Conference in New York City, two very big things happened to a fictional elephant named Elliot.

Fall 2014 Flying Starts: Esther Ehrlich

Stories have always been important to me,” says Esther Ehrlich. Her attraction to stories led her to become an oral historian, first with the Regional Oral History Office at the University of California, Berkeley, where she conducted a project on performance artists and dancers with disabilities.

Fall 2014 Flying Starts: Chelsey Philpot

Chelsey Philpot had many inspirations for Even in Paradise (Harper, Oct.), which tells the story of Charlotte Ryder, a girl changed irrevocably by the beguiling Julia Buchanan and her family.