Hooyenga, Melanie: - Multi-award winning young adult author Melanie Hooyenga writes books about strong girls who learn to navigate life despite its challenges. She first started writing as a teenager and finds she still relates best to that age group. Her award-winning YA sports romance series, The Rules Series, is about girls from Colorado falling in love and learning to stand up on their own. Her YA time travel trilogy, The Flicker Effect, is about a teen who uses sunlight to travel back to yesterday. The first book, Flicker, won first place for Middle Grade/Young Adult in the Writer's Digest 2015 Self-Published eBook awards, and The Rules Series has won ten awards, including Finalist for MG/YA in the 2019 BookLife Prize. The first book in her newest series, Chasing the Sun, won gold for young adult general fiction in the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards and was named one of the Best Indie eBooks of 2020 by Barnes & Noble Press. Most recently, Chasing the Moon was a Quarterfinalist for MG/YA in the 2023 BookLife Prize.When not writing books, you can find her wrangling her Miniature Schnauzer Gus and playing every sport imaginable with her husband Jeremy.