Fanette Mellier is a French graphic designer and artist. She studied Graphic Design at the École supérieure des arts decoratifs in Strasbourg, graduating in 2000. Her main activities revolve around typography, layout and the printed object, and she works on both commissioned and self-initiated projects.
Sydney Smith is a picturebook maker from Nova Scotia. Since graduating from NSCAD University, he’s worked on many books, including Town Is by the Sea, winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal, and Footpath Flowers, which was a New York Times Children’s Book of the Year and winner of the Governor General Award for Illustration.
Torben Kuhlmann was recognised as a gifted draftsman early in his childhood. He later studied illustration and design at the Hamburg University for Applied Sciences, finishing his studies by creating the children’s book Lindbergh: The Tale of a Flying Mouse, the first book in his hugely successful mouse adventures series.
Johanna Schaible is an artist whose work moves along the borders of illustration, art, and design. She has a degree in Illustration and Visual Communication from the Lucerne School of Art and Design, and she was one of the first members of Bolo Klub, a collective supporting an emerging generation of picturebook makers in Switzerland.
Harriet van Reek made her book debut in 1986 with ‘De Avonturen van Lena Lena’. Since then, she’s worked on a wide variety of art projects, often in collaboration with Geerten Ten Bosch. Harriet has received many awards for her work over the years, including the Gouden Griffel, the Gouden Penseel and Zilveren Penseel awards.
Marika Maijala lives and works in Helsinki as an illustrator and children’s book writer. Her debut as a children’s author, ‘Rosie’s Journey’ was nominated for the Nordic Council Children’s and Young People’s Literature Prize, and selected for the Bologna Illustrators Exhibition. In 2020, Marika was nominated for the ALMA.
Ingrid Godon is a Flemish artist and book illustrator. Since the 1980s, she’s illustrated many books for adults and children, some of which have been translated into dozens of languages. Ingrid has won a large number of awards over the years, and has been nominated four times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA).
Axel Scheffler has illustrated some of the world’s most well-loved children’s books. ‘The Gruffalo’ is considered one of the most successful picturebooks of all time, having been translated into 86 languages/dialects and sold over 14 million copies. Axel was born in Hamburg, and has lived and worked in London since the 1980s.
ATAK (Georg Barber) is an artist, graphic designer and illustrator living and working in Berlin. He’s had many solo exhibitions and worked on a variety of books, comics and illustrations for publications such as TIME and The New York Times. ATAK is also Professor of Illustration at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle.
Anete Melece studied Visual Communication at the Art Academy of Latvia and Animation at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Her animated short ‘The Kiosk’ has been shown in film festivals around the world and received many awards. Anete lives and works in Zürich as an animator and illustrator of comics and children’s books.
Sara Lundberg worked as a painter before focusing on picturebooks. She’s now illustrated over thirty books with Swedish authors, and has written several of her own. Her 2017 picturebook ‘The Bird Within Me Flies Wherever it Wants’ received the prestigious August Prize and Snöbollen for the best Swedish children’s book of the year.
Daniel Fehr is a picturebook author and board game designer. He studied photography at Zurich University of the Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York, and then he studied German literature and media at Princeton University. Daniel currently lives and works in Winterthur, Switzerland, the town where he grew up.
Gerda Dendooven is a multidisciplinary artist who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent. As well as writing and illustrating books for children, she also writes plays, novels and newspaper columns, does various live performances, and teaches graphic design and illustration at the Saint-Luc Institute in Ghent.
Sonja Danowski studied design in Nuremberg and has since been working as an illustrator and picturebook artist in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally and has won her many awards, including the Golden Island Award from Nami Concours and a Batchelder Honour from the American Library Association.
Jérémie Fischer is an illustrator and picturebook maker who graduated from the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. Jean-Baptiste Labrune is a translator and author of children’s books and novels. Jérémie and Jean-Baptiste have made three books together and they founded the literary and comic strip magazine ‘Pan’.