Anyone can write a story about anything, but only I can write a story about the stuff I care about.
What do I really care about?
Author: Matt Shanks
Something always comes from nothing
Something always comes from nothing – but giving ourselves the space to feel nothing is the difficult bit.
The slow death of fiction in picture books?
What happens when children’s publishing is too afraid to focus on good fiction?
Art needs life
It’s easy to feel that, sometimes, work ‘gets in the way’ of art. But, art needs that time, and those experiences, to make work that matters.
Publishing is Marketing
Publishing used to be more about making the book. Now it’s more about selling it.
Celebrity in picture books
Is there a real qualitative difference between ‘celebrity’ and ‘real’ authors? Or, are celebrities just another way to extend the reach of books?
An addiction to steep learning curves
A journey into art may be about reckoning with how little one knows about oneself and the rest of the world.
What’s illustration for?
If it’s about image-making, then why not stickc with photography or video? What’s so special about illustration?
The worst part of the process
Maybe it’s not that we don’t like something, it’s just that we don’t understand it yet.
For and Against Tradition
The constraints of ‘tradition’ can be useful, but so too is our capacity to completely ignore them