Maria Lai was born in 1919 in Ulassai, Sardinia. Her encounter with professor and writer Salvatore Cambosu, to whom she was linked by a deep, strong friendship, was pivotal for her formation as an artist. In 1939 she moved to Rome and then to Venice where she studied Fine Arts with Arturo Martini. After the second world war, her works have been exhibited in museums, galleries and biennales, being awarded and appreciated internationally.
Nadia Budde was born in 1967 in Berlin, where she lives and works as an illustrator. She studied Visual Communication Studies at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. In 2008 she was Visiting Professor at the Hochschule für Kunst und Design Burg Giebichenstein, and since 2005 she has been given various teaching assignments, lectures, workshops at home and abroad. From 2013 to 2015, she did artist residencies in Kyrgyzstan, India and Italy.
Niece of Sigmund Freud, Tom Seidmann-Freud (pseudonym of Marta Freud), is one of the greatest names of German children’s literature from the 20's. After studying fine arts, she choses a male pseudonym and starts creating a unique, surreal fictional world, made of clear lines and bright colours. She publishes her first book at 22 and in 1920 she marries the writer Jankew Seidmann in Berlin. She writes and illustrates several picture books where ideal dream and phantasmagoria play a key role.
Nata in un piccolo paesino delle campagne trevigiane, fin da piccola è stata attratta dal disegno e dal pasticciare con le proprie mani con forme e colori, caratteristica non attenuatasi con l'età. Dopo la maturità artistica ha intrapreso il corso in Disegno Industriale dell'Università IUAV di Treviso fino alla specializzazione in Comunicazioni Visive e Multimediali.
Marianna Merisi is a landscape architect who gathers together either a wide botanical knowledge and uncommon talent in drawing. In 2015 she was awarded with Premio Lavinia Taverna, a prominent prize dedicated to women working in the fields of gardening and landscape. She graduated at Milan Politecnico with a thesis on “Pioneer Plants: a urban regeneration project”. Since 2010 to 2016 she collaborated with Cooperativa Sociale Cascina Bollate, inside the jail premises in the outskirts of Milan, a nursery-garden where unusual plant species are grown.
Born in 1930, Ingrid Bachér is an author and great-granddaughter of German poet Theodor Storm. She served as the president of the German PEN center. She wrote La bambina e il gatto for her daughter in the 1960s.
Maria José Ferrada is a writer and a journalist. Her children’s books have been published in Chile, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Among the prizes she’s been awarded there are Premio Academia Chilena de la Lengua, Premio Poesía para Niños Ciudad de Orihuela, Premio Marta Brunet del Consejo del Libro y la Lectura, Premio de Literatura Municipalidad de Santiago. Her book Niños, dedicated to the children who were killed or made disappear during Chile’s dictatorship, was selected as representative for Chile in Ibby international catalogue.
Antonella Capetti was born in Grosio, a small town in Northern Italy, in 1967. She started reading before she was 5 and hasn’t stopped ever since. When she was 20, she started teaching at kindergarten, where she worked for 17 years. Then she moved to primary school, where she’s being teaching Italian since 2004. Her strong passion for picture books has always been a constant theme in her work: since 2013 she takes care of Apedario blog, where she writes on her activities with pupils inspired on picture books reading. She published nursery rhymes and short stories.
Francesca Brunetti è nata a Firenze, città in cui si è laureata in Lingue e letterature straniere moderne. Lavora come bibliotecaria all’INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri dove partecipa anche alla progettazione delle attività di diffusione della cultura scientifica per i bambini. Da più di un decennio si occupa di letteratura per ragazzi collaborando con riviste specializzate e di comunicazione scientifica e scrivendo libri.