Authors & Illustrators

Rebecca Mönch prefers to paint with and for children. After studying art history and art education, she now works in a museum and tries to get visitors excited about art and history. She is also finally pursuing her passion for inventing and illustrating stories. She loves dogs, especially hers, and of course her family, with…

Maria Vohn, born in Aachen in 1962, studied painting at the ‘Academie voor Toegepaste Kunsten’ in Maastricht/Netherlands. At the RWTH Aachen, she studied nudes and drawing under Prof Schönwald, as well as intensive anatomical studies in pathology. She has taken part in many exhibitions in the Aachen area and Bologna/Italy. Maria Vohn lives and works…

Anna Keller Keith was born in the Ruhr area and spent her childhood between football pitches, tower blocks and the public library. She studied Comparative Literature and German-French Studies in Bochum, Bonn and Paris, worked as an editor and conducted research in media education. Today, Anna Keller lives in Cologne, where she writes, teaches creative…

Clara Thomasset is a Belgian author and illustrator who only recently graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. She specialises in children’s books, but also enjoys writing stories and poems for adults in her art collective Koven. Inspired by the seemingly insignificant things in life, such as daydreaming, her cats and walks…

Jörg Bernardy is a philosopher and author. He writes journalistic texts (for DIE ZEIT, among others) and books for children, young people and adults. He philosophises with children in the “Maus zum Hören”, in the podcast at MausLive (WDR) and for the ‘Gedankenflieger’. He is a member of the jury for the LUCHS Children’s Book…

Heidemarie Brosche, born in 1955 in Neuburg/Danube, was a secondary school teacher and has been successfully writing children’s, youth and non-fiction books for a good 30 years. She often writes for children and young people who don’t like reading. In 2020, she was awarded the Volkacher Taler by the German Academy for Children’s and Youth…

Leslie Niemöller, born in Tübingen, is a freelance photographer based in Cologne. She has five children and one grandchild. Her book The Cucumber Squad (Die Gurkentruppe) was shortlisted for the Korbinian – Paul Maar Prize for New Talents in 2024.  

Marta Azcona was born in Oviedo one day in April last century. She graduated in Philology and moved to Madrid, where she began to work as an editor on various radio and television programmes. After more than two decades writing scripts for fiction series, she worked for five years at Televisa Internacional creating and developing…

Anna Font was born in Barcelona. She loves books. Sometimes she writes them and whenever she can she illustrates them. Even as a child she explained things by drawing, perhaps because she is the daughter of an illustrator and because at home she was always surrounded by pencils, colours, comics, illustrated books and other treasures…

Ulrike Möltgen, born in Wuppertal in 1973, studied communication design under Wolf Erlbruch. She taught as a lecturer at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and her work has won numerous awards and been shown in exhibitions. She lives with her son in Wuppertal. www.ulrikemoeltgen.de

Doris Lecher grew up near a lake in Switzerland. She studied illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York. She has been writing and drawing for children ever since. She won the Swiss Picture Book Award in 1997 with ‘Ich will Wurst’. In 2023, she was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award….

Mareike Engelke designs and illustrates at a huge table in her studio in Duisburg harbour. She has been creating new picture books since 2016. She experiments, dreams, paints, draws, writes words, and sometimes creates art that is pleasurable to the heart. Mareike lives with two old cats and her childhood sweetheart in a former nursery….

Deniz Jaspersen is the singer and guitarist of the Hamburg indie band Herrenmagazin. Together with Ove Thomsen, he also makes music (not only) for children. He now also writes books for them. Rasmus Engler is a musician and author – he was and is a member of various bands (Herrenmagazin, Gary, Das Bierbeben and others)….

Julia Dürr was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1981. Her love of drawing took her via Leipzig and Cologne to Münster University of Applied Sciences, where she studied design. Since 2008 she has been working as a freelance illustrator with a great love for picture books. In 2009, she was honoured by the Stiftung…

Roger Olmos was born in 1975. He studied children’s illustration at the Llotja Avinyó school of arts and crafts in Barcelona. As an illustrator he has worked for publishers, press, advertising and television. He has published more than forty books, translated into numerous languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Lazarillo Prize in 2008;…

Uwe Becker was born and grew up in Krefeld. After studying biology, which took him to Tenerife, the Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe, he began writing poems for children in the 1990s. He lives in Cologne, where he has a garden, and in Wendland, which he loves very much. He also has a very adventurous dog…

Julian Tapprich, born in 1982 in Zurich, studied comparative literature and photography in Vienna and works as an illustrator and cartoonist. juliantapprich.com

After studying to be a teacher in Hamburg, Wiltrud Wagner went on to do a second degree: Illustration at the HAW Hamburg with a degree in design. She has been working as a freelance illustrator since 1994. She works in the children’s book sector and has illustrated learning materials and school books. She lives in…

Adrian Draschoff is a filmmaker and author based in Cologne. He has worked on documentary and fictional productions for various TV channels, for Netflix and for cinema. For the anti-racism children’s series “Moooment”, he and the team of authors were nominated for the Grimme Prize, the Golden Sparrow and the Civis Media Prize in 2022….

Natascha Baumgärtner works as a freelance illustrator in Berlin. Her clients include newspapers and magazines such as “Die Zeit”, “Geo Reisen”, “New York Times” and others. When You Dream is Natascha Baumgärtner’s first picture book for children.