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Authors(in alphabetical order by last name) Annie BarrowsArtist Website: http://www.anniebarrows.com/{Annie Barrows} "I sometimes think I've spent my entire life trying to recreate one particular afternoon of my tenth year," says Annie Barrows. "That was the day I lay on the couch reading a wonderful book called Time at the Top until I lost all sense of my real life and joined the life of the book instead. It was glorious, like walking into a dream. I want every kid to have that experience, but most of all, being horribly selfish, I want to have it again, too. And finally, I've discovered a way: I write books." Annie grew up in Northern California, and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, with a degree in Medieval History. Unable to find a job in the middle ages, she decided upon a career as an editor, eventually landing at Chronicle Books in San Francisco, where she was in charge of "all the books that nobody in their right mind would publish." After earning an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Mills College, Annie wrote a number of books for grown-ups about such diverse subjects as fortune-telling (she can read palms!), urban legends (there are no alligators in the sewer!), and opera (she knows what they're singing about!). In 2003, Annie grew weary of grown-ups, and began to write for kids, which she found to be way more fun. Her first children's book, Ivy and Bean, an ALA Notable Book for 2007, was soon followed by other books in the series, including Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go and Ivy and Bean Break the Fossil Record. In between writing books about Ivy and Bean, Annie began to write The Magic Half. "I wrote the kind of book I loved as a kid—what I call regular magic, which means that it takes place in the same world we all live in, except that a magical event occurs. The Magic Half is a catalog of my favorite daydreams: a tiny door in an enchanted house, time travel, and twins." Cynthia Chin-LeeArtist Website: http://www.geocities.com/Cynthia_Chin_Lee/{Cynthia Chin-Lee} Cynthia Chin-Lee was born and raised in Washington, D.C., in a family with four older siblings. Her father is a medical doctor and her mother an artist. Cynthia picked up a pen and began writing for fun when she was in the sixth grade. "I liked writing poetry and scribbling in my journal because I found it comforting and therapeutic. I still write for that reason and because I like playing with words." Cynthia attended Harvard University where she studied East Asian Languages. She spent her junior year abroad at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University. After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude, Cynthia accepted a graduate fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and studied at the University of Hawaii. Cynthia began her writing career in the technical field for banks and high tech companies, but she has also written freelance articles for magazines and newspapers, as well as taught writing classes at community colleges and universities. She currently works as a technical writer and documentation manager for Sun Microsystems. Cynthia's first book, Almond Cookies & Dragon Well Tea (Polychrome Publishing, 1993), is an autobiographical tale of friendship. She is also the author of A Is for Asia (Orchard Books, 1997), which Ruminator Review called one of the "Best 100 American Children's Books of the Century," and A Is for the Americas (Orchard Books, 1999), which was an NCSS/CBC Notable Children's Book in Social Studies in 2000. Cynthia's first book with Charlesbridge is Amelia to Zora: Twenty-six Women Who Changed the World, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy. She followed this with a companion book called Akira to Zoltan: Twenty-six Men Who Changed the World. Both books have won several awards and are available in hardcover and paperback. They have also been translated into Korean. She is an acitve member in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). http://www.scbwi.org Cynthia Chin-Lee lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and two children. Maya Christina GonzalezArtist Website: http://www.mayagonzalez.com/{Maya Cristina Gonzalez} I work in a highly communicative, but silent medium. I paint. I spend hours each day alone and silent in front of my board applying color, creating form, traveling unspeakable distances while standing in the same spot. Recently, I sat down with Richard Lou, the curator for Hecho En Califas, to answer questions. What I experienced with him was a first for me. His presence and his provocation provided me with an opportunity to speak. During the interview, I felt like I was sitting in a perfect circle of sunlight. It softened me and gave rise to a voice I have never heard. The questions I remember most are the ones that went unanswered. "Your exteriors are painted the same as your interiors. What does that signify? Are you trying to keep something in? Or something out?" I didn't get a chance to follow up on those, but I heard him asking me those questions over and over in the days after the interview. This feels like an entry point to talk about my work here. Because it lays a foundation for anything else I can say. What he was picking up on has to do with the origin of my work. While I am not trying to keep anything in or out, I am working from a very deep personal/spiritual landscape. My images most often begin as haunts within my mind. When an image haunts me long enough, I commit it to paint. These haunts are generally related to something going on in my inner life. The image may be a summation, a resolution of a particular issue. Or it can present more of a lesson, open, waiting to be experienced. Sometimes these haunts are from other times, even other dimensions. Often the whole point is simply the act of painting one of these haunts. The time spent fully creating the image imparts what I need to learn. Painting is my healer, my teacher, my guide. The painting itself stands simply as a milepost, a marker on the side of the road. I've found that away from me, my paintings still hold the power of their lesson. At a show in Sacramento, a young woman came up to me, quite shy. She asked to speak with me privately. She said that standing amidst my paintings, she felt beautiful, strong, transcendent, a way that she had never felt before. She began to cry. I was very moved, all the time knowing that this had nothing to do with me, but to do with my paintings exposed and doing their job. Sometimes I think that I am simply the one who gets to stand in front of the easel while this work finds its way up and out. One of the bravest questions Richard Lou asked me was, "You say that your paintings are often marks, mileposts for rites of passage. I see that your body is marked too. What marks become paintings and what marks go to your body?" Immediately I thought about my paintings out there in the world. They live with other people, have lives separate from mine. They are like my children. I give birth to them, then let them go to fulfill what destiny they may have. Some are teaching and holding space for people I have never even met. They are independent of me. But sometimes marks come up for me that are mine. They are for me to hold onto so that the lesson or the healing can stay close at hand. Keep me on track. All of my body marks have stories like my paintings do. Mark a time, a passage, a lesson that I must remember everyday. I am a traveling artist, and my body documents my journey as much as my paintings do. Jennifer HolmArtist's Website: http://www.jenniferholm.com/{Jennifer Holm} When I was a kid, I liked to read. A lot. One of our neighbors said recently that his clearest memory of me as a child was watching me rake the lawn one-handed while I read a book with the other! In fact, the highlight of a particular summer vacation was not, for me, going on the water slide at an amusement park, but rather stopping at a bookstore with a great kid's section and discovering-gasp!-that my favorite author, Lloyd Alexander, had written four more books. I was born in California across from a zoo and then we lived on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound, and then moved again to Audubon, Pennsylvania where I spent most of my childhood. My dad was a pediatrician, and my mom a pediatric nurse. We had a dog named Ruffy who had a bad habit of chasing skunks and a hamster named Sneaker who liked to curl up in my hair and fall asleep (he was a very mellow hamster). But my childhood was marked by something else-boys. Specifically, brothers. I had a pack of them. Four to be exact, and I liked to do everything they did-softball, kickball, climbing trees, spitting contests, swimming in the creek, you name it. I guess it left a lasting impression. Even my husband admits that it takes me less time to get ready in the bathroom than him! My childhood has always been my main source of inspiration for my writing. You can see glimpses of it in my book THE CREEK, and also in OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA. Another big influence during these years were comic books and cartoon strips. My brothers and I would fight over the big color funny section of the Sunday newspaper. I still love comic books and graphic novels and I think reading them has helped make me a better writer. I attended Audubon elementary School where I had a wonderful librarian named Mrs. Ellenburg. After surviving middle school (barely), I attended Methacton High School. In high school I did lots of different things-I was in the marching band, I was on the debate team, and I played lacrosse. So I guess you could say I was hard to pigeonhole. I graduated and went to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and that's where I really started writing. After I graduated from college, I moved to New York City where I became a broadcast producer of television commercials and music videos for clients like Nickelodeon and MTV and American Express and Hershey's and even Huggies (yes-baby wipes!) I enjoyed working in television but I had always wanted to be a writer. My father's stories of the family farm in Naselle, Washington intrigued me and so when a family member sent me a photocopy of a diary kept by my great aunt, Alice Amelia Holm, when she was a young girl, I got the spark. May Amelia and the Jackson family were born. I was incredibly fortunate to receive a Newbery Honor for my first novel, OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA, and that allowed me to eventually become a full-time writer. My books have been translated into several languages and The Seattle Children's Theatre staged OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA in 2002. I'm trying to stay out of trouble these days. I still prefer reading to amusement parks, and on occasion, I rake the lawn while reading a book. Although I confess I don't seem to get many leaves up that way. I now split my time between writing and taking care of my son, Will. My husband, Jonathan Hamel, and I recently collaborated on a series called THE STINK FILES about a British international cat of mystery. We all live in Northeastern United States with one slightly stinky cat named Princess Leia Organa. Dave KeaneArtist's Website: http://www.mrdavekeane.com/{Dave Keane} I grew up in a house with six brothers in San Jose, California. I'm the middle child of seven boys. As you might imagine, it was a noisy house. I spent a lot of time playing games, having sock fights, building forts, playing ball, avoiding chores, and watching the The Three Stooges whenever I got the chance. I enjoyed drawing pictures, reading books and magazines about making monster movies, and learning about magic tricks and magicians. I also read comic books, mostly Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Batman. In high school, I did just about everything except my homework. I played football for four years, performed in school plays, participated in the speech and debate club, drew cartoons for the school paper and yearbook, and worked hard on earning the title of class clown. In college, I spent two years as a Theater Arts major studying acting before I switched to English in my junior year after I went crazy for books. While in college, I did stand-up comedy and drew cartoons for my college's daily newspaper—which helped fund my love of pizza! I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. After college, my creativity and drawing skills came in handy working in advertising as a copywriter and later as a creative director. I started my own advertising agency with my wife, Christine, and we have done that since 1994. We have three children (two girls and a boy), a tortoise named Shelly, and a dog named Luna . . . and sometimes we have fish—but they can be tricky! In my spare time I like to go to the movies, draw, lift weights, learn new words, hang out in bookstores, watch Sherlock Holmes movies, and read books and newspapers. I started writing children's books when I was 36 years old and sold my first book three years later. I now spend my days writing, drawing, and driving my kids all over the place. We live in Northern California. Elisa KlevenArtist's Website: http://www.elisakleven.com/{Elisa Kleven} Elisa Kleven has been a delightful presence at every festival since the first one in 2003. She writes charming stories and illustrates picture books with lovely collages. You may be familiar with The Paper Princess, Sun Bread, and Ernst. Her newest book, The Apple Doll, came out this summer. “I love to make up characters and build stories and environments around them. To make my pictures I combine many media: watercolor, gouache, ink, colored pencils, pastels, markers, crayons -- anything that works! I also use lots of collage. As I did in childhood, I snip and glue old scraps into new shapes: a piece of wool becomes a lion's mane or a child's hair. A doily, snipped to bits, becomes a snowstorm. Like my collages, my stories are also about the power of imagination to transform old into new, familiar into fantastical.” Jim LaMarcheArtist Website: http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/.../ContributorDetail.aspx?CId=13896{Jim LaMarche} Jim LaMarche wrote and illustrated The Raft. He also illustrated Little Oh and The Rainbabies, both by Laura Krauss Melmed. He lives in Santa Cruz, California. In His Own Words... " It's funny how things turn out. I wasn't one of those kids with a clear vision of the future, the ones who know at age five that they will be writers or doctors or artists. I liked to draw, but then, so did most of the kids I knew, and growing up to be an artist never really occurred to me. What I did want to be, in order of preference, was a magician, Davy Crockett, a doctor, a priest (until I found out they couldn't get married), and a downhill ski racer. " But I always loved to make things, and once I got going on a project I loved, I stuck with it. Once, when I was five or six, I cut a thousand cloth feathers out of an old sheet, which I then attempted to glue to my bony little body. I was sure I could have flown off the back porch if I'd just had a better glue. Another time I dug up some smooth blue-gray clay from the field behind our house, then molded it into an entire zoo, dried the animals in the sun, and painted them as realistically as I could. I made a grotto out of cement, a shoe box, and my fossil collection. I made moccasins out of an old deerhide I found in the basement. " I grew up in the little Wisconsin town of Kewaskum, the soul of which was the Milwaukee River. In the summer we rafted on it and swam in it. In the winter we skated on it, sometimes traveling miles upriver. In the spring and fall my dad took us on long canoe trips, silently sneaking up on deer, heron, and fields of a thousand Canada geese. And almost all year long we fished for bullheads and northerns from the dam. " I began college at the University of Wisconsin as a biology major, but somewhere along the line--I'm not sure when or even why--I switched to art, and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in art. I still had no idea of becoming a professional artist, however. In the meantime, I joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and moved to Bismarck, North Dakota, to work with United Tribes of North Dakota creating school curriculum materials. It was a great job. Because there were only a few of us, I was able to try my hand at a little of everything: writing, graphic design, photography, and illustration. It was then that I slowly realized that it might be possible for me to make a living at art. I moved to California, and in the evenings-after working all day as a carpenter's assistant--I put together a portfolio. " Twenty years later, I'm still here, living in Santa Cruz with my wife, Toni, and our three sons, Mario, Jean-Paul, and Dominic. The Pacific Ocean is only a few blocks away, and the scenery is very different from that of the Midwest, but somehow Kewaskum and the Milwaukee River show up in almost everything I draw. They provided the details of setting for The Rainbabies, Carousel, and Grandmother's Pigeon, and they are the setting for the book I'm working on now, my own story about the magic of a raft. " I feel very lucky to have ended up as an illustrator of children's books. And maybe that isn't so different from my childhood dream of being a magician after all. Starting with a clean sheet of paper and with nothing up my sleeves, I get to create something that was never there before." Kathryn OtoshiArtist Website: http://www.kokidsbooks.com/{Kathryn Otoshi} Author & Illustrator Kathryn Otoshi graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a BA in graphic design, and from California College of Arts with an MFA in painting. Otoshi worked for many years at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic as the graphic design art director, where she led a team of designers to create hundreds of promotional pieces. What Emily Saw is her first children’s book under the KO Kids Books line, and won the 2003 Bay Area Independent Publishers Award for Best Children’s Book. The Saddest Little Robot, a chapter book she designed and illustrated, won the BookSense 76 Pick Award. She teaches at Bay Area conferences and workshops. |
Orion Alternative School ~ 815 Allerton Street ~ Redwood City, CA 94063 ~ Phone: 363.0611 ~ Fax: 367.4364
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