Jeanne Willis (Author) Jeanne Willis wrote her first book when she was five - a slim volume about cats written in pencil and stitched together with a painfully blunt needle so that it looked like a 'real' book. After that, there was no turning back. Having been fired from her Saturday job - selling cowboy boots on the Kings Road - for chewing gum, and after a brief career as a reptile vet's assistant, she worked as a copywriter and had her first picture book published at the age of 21 (which she wrote whilst pretending to be busy creating adverts for cognac). She has since written over 300 books and has won several awards, which are arranged in the attic where she works, along with her collection of caterpillars, pink-toed tarantula skins and live locusts. Jeanne has a keen interest in Natural History and has lost count of the number of species featured in her books, including everything from slugs to sloths. She is currently into corvids - especially Nosy Crows. Anastasia Suvorova (Illustrator) Anastasia is an illustrator from Russia, based in St Petersburg. Since early childhood, she has been drawing, dreaming and inventing stories. She is very fond of reading and travelling, as well as plants and flowers. Now, after graduating from the Academy of Arts, she tries to learn about shape and colour, lightness and movement from nature. Anastasia makes illustrations for books, magazines and games. Books are her greatest love because they are doors that open up new magical and wonderful worlds. She creates most of her illustrations in digital art, trying to bring the feeling and warmth of traditional materials into them. She is the 2018 winner of the Bologna Children's Book Fair Silent Book Contest.
