Pat Cummings

In addition to the Coretta Scott King, the Orbis Pictus, the NAACP Image Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards, Pat Cummings is the recipient of nine t-shirts, twenty two mugs, seven hundred forty-five ballerina drawings and one embroidered pillow from readers. After graduating from Pratt Institute she began a career as a freelance illustrator, working on editorial, advertising, theatrical and, eventually, picture book projects .

Pat is the author and/or illustrator of over 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, from board books to young adult. Her TALKING WITH ARTISTS series features prominent children's book illustrators while TALKING WITH ADVENTURERS, co-authored and edited with her sister, Linda Cummings Minor, PhD. features interviews and profiles of explorers and scientists such as Jane Goodall and Robert Ballard.

She has worked as a producer and writer for Nickelodeon's Gullah Gullah Island and now teaches children's book illustration and writing at Parsons, The New School for Design and Pratt Institute. The growing list of gifted and award-winning students of her class include David Eza Stein whose book INTERRUPTING CHICKEN has become an animated series on Apple TV and Xindi Yan, illustrator of Reese Witherspoon's BUSY BETTY books.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Pat was an Army brat and grew up in Germany, Okinawa, Kansas and Virginia. She and her husband Chuku Lee, author of her picture book, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, live in a loft in beautiful downtown Brooklyn, New York. Her latest books include her debut middle grade novel, TRACE, from HarperCollins and WHERE IS MOMMY?, a picture book from Holiday House.

Pat sits on the Advisory Council of SCBWI, the Boards of the Authors Guild, the Authors League Fund, the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation and serves as Chair of the Founders Award Jury for the Society of Illustrators’ annual Original Art Show. She is also a member of WGAE, The Writer’s Guild of America, East.

Find her on Twitter @PatCummingsBook and Instagram at patcummingsbooks.