Shadra Strickland is an award winning illustrator, receiving the NAACP Image award in 2010 for co-illustrating Our Children Can Soar. Strickland also won the Ezra Jack Keats award and Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe award for New Talent on her very first picture book, Bird. Works from both of these books are featured in our exhibition Telling A People’s Story.
Strickland studied design, writing, and illustration at Syracuse University and later went on to complete her M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has illustrated 15+ children’s and young adult books.
On January 23 Strickland’s new book, Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World, was released. In this new book Strickland collaborated with other star illustrators to make a piece that would inspire young women to be all they could be.
Currently Strickland travels the country doing workshops with children, librarians, and teachers. She also can be found teaching an illustration class at the Maryland Institute College of Art. To purchase some of her works you can visit Strickland’s Etsy shop.
Strickland also teaches an online class, “The Art of the Picture Book”, for those that are looking to learn how to draw professionally or recreationally. To check out more about Strickland and her Jump In Studio visit her website or Facebook page.
To hear Strickland speak come to Telling A People’s Story Exhibition Conference April 20-21 at the Miami University Art Museum.
Source(s): Strickland , Shadra. “Jump In Studio.” Jump In Studio, www.jumpin.shadrastrickland.com/.