hello
Ed Vere is an award winning and New York Times bestselling writer & illustrator of picture books. He is a patron at CLPE and is the artist in residence at the Born Free Foundation.
His latest book 'the artist' is a joyful book about a young artist… for all young artists. Aiming to give creative confidence to young artists everywhere… celebrating what it means to be an artist. Knowing that mistakes are a part of making art… and that the world is a joyful, beautiful place, full of wonders. This story came from co-creating the ‘Power of Pictures’ visual literacy programme with Charlotte Hacking and CLPE. It has been chosen as one of Amazon's best children's books of 2023.
'How to be a Lion' is the winner of Oscar's Book Prize 2019, selected by the children's laureate Lauren Child and a jury including Sarah Brown. It was also selected as one of Amazon.com's best books of 2018 as well as being an NPR great choice for 2018. It is an EB White Read Aloud Honor Book.
'Max the Brave' is a New York Times bestseller and was named one of The Sunday Times's '100 Modern Children's Classics'. It is published in over 15 languages and was followed by 'Max at Night' and 'Max & Bird'.
'The Getaway', his first book, won the Highland Children's Book Award in 2007. The following year, 'Banana' was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway prize. In 2009 'Mr Big' was Booktrust’s official Booktime book, reaching 750,000 British schoolchildren – the largest single print run for a picture book! In the same year, pop-up book 'Chick' won the Booktrust Early Years Award for best baby book.
'Bedtime for Monsters' was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2011 and the next year Ed had the honour of being one of the four Roald Dahl Funny Prize judges, along with Michael Rosen.
Ed also works on many projects related to his books . . . from speaking at festivals from Rio to Mexico to Kerala, to curating festival experiences in the UK, to live drawing onstage at The Barbican Centre alongside the Britten Sinfonia, and at The Wigmore hall with the Neil Cowley Trio.
Ed worked with CLPE to co-create the award winning Power of Pictures programme which encourages visual literacy in primary school education and has received major funding from the Arts Council, EEF & RSA. You can read an article in The Guardian relating to this work here.
Ed lives and works in London.
Agent
Ed is represented by Jodie Hodges at United Artists. Please contact Jodie with work enquiries at jhodges@unitedagents.co.uk
Events/Schools/Festivals/etc
Ed has worked extensively in schools across the UK and abroad running reading and drawing workshops... including teaching at International Schools in Kathmandu, Nanjing & Sau Paolo.
He has also been an invited speaker at many literary festivals in the UK and internationally, including; Hay Festival, Bath Festival, Edinburgh International Book festival in the UK. And; Cuirt International Book Festival, Galway, Ireland; Towers and Tales, Waterford, Ireland; International Literarture Festival, Dublin; Guadalajara FIL, Mexico (British Council); Hay Festival Kerala, India (British Council); Flupp International literature festival, Rio, Brazil (British Council); Valletta Festival of Children's Literature, Malta (British Council)
Ed has performed on stage, live drawing with (amongst others) The Britten Sinfonia and The Neil Cowley Trio for the 'Mr Big plays Jazz' concerts. Selected venues have been; The Barbican Centre (London), Wigmore Hall (London), The Hexagon (Reading), Saffron Hall (Saffron Waldon), Norwich Cathedral and Cuirt International Literary Festival in Galway, Ireland.
Ed was asked to curate an experience for The 2014 Pop-Up festival (Pop-Up, a literary outreach organisation), which appeared at two venues in London, Swiss Cottage & Thurrock. Ed organised a 'Mr Big plays Jazz' 5 hour marathon of live Jazz, live drawing & storytelling. Children were invited to make their own instruments in a junk orchestra workshop and then join the band on stage for the finale of the concerts.
Ed also worked with Pop-Up to co-create a short film with a school in Hackney in 2013 to be presented to the children of Rio at the Flupp festival in Rio in November 2013. At Flupp, Ed presented the film & ran workshops at the festival and in a local school, alongside several impromptu 4 hour sessions, drawing the children of the favela in the streets with French artist Boulet.
You can read about his experience at FLUPP here.
Education
Ed studied fine art at Camberwell School of Art, London.