Claudia Carlson is an illustrator and award-winning book designer who lives in Manhattan with a cat, dog and husband. She has worked in publishing for many years and is now running her own business, ClaudiaGraphics. She creates illustrations digitally in Photoshop and Illustrator and paints watercolor landscapes when she travels and portrait sketches when people give readings. She is also a poet and her first book of poetry, The Elephant House, was published in 2007.