ABOUT

Joy has loved drawing and creating stories ever since she was given chocolate as first prize for a 3rd grade art contest. Dark chocolate is often involved in her creative process to this day.

 

With a BS in Design, Illustration and Animation from San Jose State, Joy has worked in a variety of animation, art and design jobs but her favorite place to create is in children’s publishing. She usually scans her hand drawn illustrations and paints them digitally, or just goes for it and draws and paints in the computer. Joy has illustrated many kid’s magazines, over a dozen board books, and her own author- illustrated picture books THE PECULIAR PIG and THE CUTEST BRAVE LITTLE BUNNY with Nancy Paulsen Books.

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Joy loves creating heartfelt characters and stories that most often add a bit of magic and humor to non-fiction topics. Nature and animals are her sweet spot and she tends to enjoy making wee characters in contrast to a big world. Joy also wants to help bring other author's manuscripts to life as well as illustrate her many, many own stories!

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When not in her studio writing and illustrating, Joy can be found wrangling Monarch caterpillars, gardening, tending to her 40+ house plants, hiking in nature with her family and foster dogs, and eating her veggies. She lives in the bay area with her husband, son, and rescue dog, Olive.