The Maurice Sendak Foundation Announces the 2024 Sendak Fellows

Following a selection process via nomination and judging committees, The Maurice Sendak Foundation is happy to announce the 2024 Sendak Fellows. They are: Charlotte Ager, Rocío Araya, and Cozbi A. Cabrera.

The Sendak Fellowship will be held at Milkwood Farm in South Kortright, NY and will run from May 13th through June 9th. The residency offers a four-week period of time for artists to deeply engage in a project of their choosing in the relative isolation of a rural setting. At the same time, they receive inspiration from each other, from visiting artists and professionals in the field, and a visit to the Sendak house and archives in Ridgefield, CT. 

For many years, Maurice Sendak wanted to create a formal program for what he had been doing informally his whole career: helping promising illustrators. In 2009, Sendak enlisted the help of long-time assistant Lynn Caponera, as well as photographer and community activist Dona Ann McAdams to help realize his vision and The Sendak Fellowship was inaugurated in 2010.

The goal of the Fellowship, in Maurice’s words, is for the Fellows to “create work that is not vapid, stupid, or sexy, but original. Work that excites and incites. Illustration is like dance; it should move like—and to—music.”

Bios:

Charlotte Ager is a freelance illustrator based in London, originally from the Isle of Wight. She has worked for a wide range of clients including The New York Times, Google design,  Penguin Random House and Flying Eye Books  across editorial illustration, branding and book publishing. She loves that illustration has the ability to communicate the difficult and challenging whilst having enormous capacity for joy and silliness. She likes to find the point where memory, imagination and observation meet.

Website: https://charlotteager.co.uk/

Rocío Araya is an illustrator from Bilbao, Spain currently living in France. She has published more than ten books, in some of which she is also the author. Rocio explores the universe of childhood, as a place of connection with the deepest part of ourselves. Rocío’s first English-language translation of her book Head in the Clouds will be published by Elsewhere Editions in 2024.

Website: www.rocioaraya.com

Cozbi A. Cabrera is the author/illustrator of Me & Mama which won a 2021 Coretta Scott King Honor and a Caldecott Honor and My Hair is A Garden.  Her star reviewed illustrated titles include Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks by Suzanne Slade (2021 ALA Sibert Informational Award Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor), Most Loved In All The World by Tonya Cherie Hegamin, Stitchin’ and Pullin’: A Gees Bend Quilt by Patricia McKissack, Thanks A Million by Nikki Grimes and Beauty, Her Basket by Sandra Belton. Her dolls, quilts and paintings exhibited concurrently with the Gees Bend Quilts at the Myrtle Beach Art Museum (2017). She continues to work on community quilting projects that trace both a sense of place and memory. Cozbi lives in Evanston, IL with her husband and daughter.

Website: www.cozbi.com/illustration