Claudia Rueda: Illustrator–Colombia

Claudia Rueda is a Colombian writer and illustrator of over twenty picturebooks for children. Her work has been described as an ingenious graphic exploration of superb refinement. Rueda's books have been published in Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and the United States and have been translated into ten different languages around Asia and Europe. Her work has received several awards and honors—including Italy's Nati per Leggere Prize, the selection for the New York Society of illustrators, and the IBBY Honour List. She is also a New York Times Bestseller illustrator and a New York Public Library selection.

Claudia Rueda's work has always played around the rich contrast between visual and verbal narratives. Before becoming a picturebook author, she developed an interest in political cartooning while attending law and art school in her hometown. Claudia Rueda's cartoons were published in the main Colombian newspapers during the times of the drug and guerilla wars. Her law school graduation thesis was a graphic history of Roman law. After publishing some educational graphic books on environmental and political issues, Claudia Rueda and her husband moved to San Francisco, California, to learn about computer graphics and animation. By serendipity, she found a course on children's books illustration at the University of Berkeley. Rueda's final class project developed into her first published picturebook after a visit to the Bologna Book Fair while living in Madrid, Spain. She also holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Claudia Rueda was born in Colombia and grew up among three siblings and a book-eating dog. She currently lives at 2620 meters above sea level in the big city of Bogotá with her husband and her two daughters.