Kaley McKean
Kaley McKean is a Canadian illustrator with a BDes in Illustration from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She has over 10 years of experience in the industry, working in children’s publishing, editorial, packaging, advertising, and more. As well as Nosy Crow, her clients include DK, Usborne, Chronicle, Aquila Magazine, Mudpuppy, Smithsonian, and The New York Times.
Kaley currently lives in Toronto with her partner and fellow illustrator, Nolan Pelletier, and an array of plants and animals. In her spare time, she can be found tending to her overgrown allotment garden or hunting for mushrooms in the woods.
Tegen Evans
Tegen Evans is a children’s book author and editor based in London. She has an English degree from Oxford University and now spends her time researching and writing about all kinds of topics for children – from Greek myths to woodland adventures. When she’s not at her desk, you can usually find her wandering around the parks and bookshops of south east London. Tegen also writes under the pen-name Goldie Hawk. Her books have been translated into 18 languages.
Maggie Li
Maggie has a passion for the natural world and delights in illustrating animals, dinosaurs and mischievous children. Dig Dig Dinosaur is her first illustrated picture book having published numerous non-fiction titles and board books in her 10 year career as a children’s illustrator. She now works and lives in East London and when she’s not buried in books at her desk you’ll probably find her raiding a second hand book shop for a vintage picture book gem. She has a passion for cooking and food and would love to illustrate a children’s recipe book one day!
Anjali Goswami
Professor Anjali Goswami is a Research Leader in Palaeobiology and Dean of Postgraduate Education at the Natural History Museum, London and an Honorary Professor of Palaeobiology at University College London. She is also President of The Linnean Society of London, where Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was first presented in 1858. She was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2024.
She grew up around Detroit, Michigan (USA), but spent long periods in India growing up, where her love of nature was first sparked by seeing a tiger when she was 4 years old. She studied Biology and Geology at the University of Michigan and conducted her PhD research on mammal evolution at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History before moving to London to take up a research fellowship at the Natural History Museum. Before coming back to the Natural History Museum as a research leader, she lectured at the University of Cambridge and University College London.
Anjali specialises in the evolution of animal shape, especially skulls, and she has led expeditions to search for fossils all over the world, especially India, Argentina, and Svalbard. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Palaeontological Association’s President’s Medal, the Linnean Society’s Bicentenary Medal, the Zoological Society of London’s Scientific Medal, and HumanistUK’s Darwin Day Medal.
She is passionate about inspiring people around the world to explore, study, and protect nature and hopes everyone will get out and get their hands and feet dirty while learning more about this amazing planet we live on.
Grasya Oliyko
Grasya Oliyko is a Ukrainian artist. She studied fine arts and book graphics at university and now illustrates children’s books for publishers all around the world, including The Old Lion Publishing House, Flying Eye Books, and Ranok. Grasya loves animals and has two dogs and two cats that she rescued from the streets to give them a loving home.
Clare Owen
Clare is a UK-based illustrator, who graduated from art school in 2009 and has been working as a freelance illustrator ever since! Clare works on a big variety of fun projects, creating pictures and patterns for home products, stationery, story books, magazines and packaging. All influenced by her love of colour, nature and mid-century design.
Originally from Cornwall, she now lives in Bristol with her boyfriend and two cats.
Rachel Greener
Rachel Greener is a children’s books editor from London who has written and edited fiction, non-fiction and picture books about everything from the ancient Egyptians and ocean plastics to teenage detectives and zombie goldfish. She wrote this book because she thinks it is important that all children have a chance to see themselves reflected in a book about puberty.
Sophy Williams
Sophy Williams is an award-winning illustrator with twenty-five years experience illustrating children’s books. While still studying, she twice won prizes in the Readers Digest Young Illustrator’s competition and was runner up for the Mother Goose Award for her first picture book. She spent some of her childhood in exotic locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and the Middle East and often finds her illustrations being influenced by these places. Her pictures are filled with atmosphere and drama created with soft pastels. She now lives by the Kennet and Avon canal in Bradford on Avon with her husband, author/illustrator MP Robertson, their two lanky teenage sons and a mischievous grey cat called Hamish. When not illustrating she sings and performs in a choir, grows fruit and veg on her allotment and drinks lots coffee with her friends.
Tom Huddleston
Alongside his novels FloodWorld and DustRoad and his animal-rescue series for younger readers, Cosmic Creatures, Tom Huddleston has written for the official Star Wars: Adventures in Wild Space saga and the Warhammer Adventures series for Games Workshop. He is also a musician and film journalist. He enjoys outdoor swimming, chewy sweets and watching too many movies.
