About the Author/Illustrator
LAUREN MILLS is a book illustrator and author, sculptor and painter. She illustrated Anne of Green Gables, At the Back of the North Wind and many of her own books. The Rag Coat won numerous awards, including New York State’s Charlotte Award for Best Picture Book. Fairy Wings, written by Mills and co-illustrated with her husband, Dennis Nolan, won the Golden Kite Medal for Best Picture Book from SCBWI and was optioned by three major film companies for feature film treatment.
Illustrations from several of Mills’ books toured the United States in a show called, “Brave Little Girls”, after it’s first exhibition at the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. Mills’ work has been included in the Spectrum's Best of Fantastic Art, IX Arts of Imaginative Realism, Art Renewal Center’s International Salon Competitions, Society of Sculptors, Portrait Society of America, Allied Artists of America, American Women Artists Exhibition, and the Exhibition of American-Chinese Realism. Lauren Mills’ art has been reviewed or featured in the Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, Smithsonian, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, American Artist, Victorian Magazine and more.
The NY Times described Mills’ watercolors for Tatterhood and the Hobgoblins as “Alluring...to the point of PreRaphaelitism” and the Washington Post wrote of her watercolors for The Rag Coat, “exquisite...complex.... and radiant.”
Mills currently teaches in the MFA Illustration Program at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, Connecticut.
To see “Awards for Sculpture” click here
More about the Author/Illustrator
The fourth of five children, Mills grew up playing and pretending in the woods of Connecticut and spent her summers at her grandparents' in West Virginia. In her teens she moved to Oregon and Minnesota and later lived in Colorado, California where she lived in a log cabin and raised goats and chickens while working as a fashion illustrator before returning to school at San Jose State University and received the first MA degree in Illustration from the California State system. She and her husband, author/illustrator Dennis Nolan moved to Massachusetts in 1986 to pursue children’s books. Mills and Nolan collaborated on several projects, most notable, their daughter Genevieve May Nolan also known as Evie.The Mills-Nolan family lived in a converted barn in western Massachusetts where they had a host of wild animals friends.
Lauren A. Mills has illustrated several of her own stories as well as the children’s classics: At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald, Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery and Thumbelina by HC Anderson. Elfabet by Jane Yolen was her first illustrated picture book.
The Rag Coat The Rag Coat was Mills’ first original story and has remained in hard back since 1991.(Little, Brown). It received the Charlotte Award, thirteen state awards, has been told over the radio, has been performed as a ballet by the University of Utah, and received the Smithsonian’s “Season’s Choice” award. Fairy Wings, written by Lauren, and co-illustrated with Dennis Nolan, won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award.
Much of Mills’ own experiences found their way into her novel, Minna’s Patchwork Coat and her picture book, The Rag Coat. See the Interview
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/68786-four-questions-for-lauren-a-mills.html
For an interview on Mills’ process of Minna’s Patchwork Coat, click here
Interviews with Lauren Mills
Publisher's Weekly, Nov. 24, 2015
Click here to see the interview
From the Mixed up Files of Middle Grade Authors, Nov. 9, 2015.
Click here for more information
interview with Mills' from Kathy Temean's Blog, Illustrator Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016
click here to view the interview
Interview with Mills by Angela Cerrito for SCBWI Bologna 2016 on Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations, March 18, 2016. click here for interview
About Lauren Mills
Lauren A. Mills has won national acclaim as a book author and illustrator and as a sculptor and painter. She was greatly influenced by the 19th century artists, especially the Pre-Raphaelites for their focus of the natural world as well as their sense of mythical wonder. The fourth of five children, Mills grew up playing and pretending in the woods of Connecticut and spent her summers at her grandparents' in West Virginia.
In her teens she moved to Oregon and Minnesota and later lived in Colorado, California and Massachusetts where she resides now. She and her husband, author/illustrator Dennis Nolan collaborated on several projects, most notable, their daughter...read more