Valerie Hobbs is the author of many award winning novels for young adults including Sonnys War, Tender, and How Far Would You Have Gotten If I Hadnt Called You Back, for which she was designated a Flying Start author by Publishers Weekly in 1996. Hobbs was the winner of the 1999 PEN/Norma Klein award for an emerging voice of literary merit among American writers of childrens fiction and the Arizona Library Association Young Adult Author of the Year in 2003. Defiance, her most recent middle-grade novel, was given the 2006 most distinguished fiction award by the Childrens Literature Council of Southern California and has been nominated for twelve state awards. "