And Then It Was Time

Born in Genoa, illustrator Anna Pirolli moved to Milan to study illustration at the European Institute of Design, where she graduated in 2001. She has worked as a freelance illustrator and art director for companies such as Mondadori, Pearson, Vogue, MTV, Kinder Ferrero, Telecom, Nickelodeon, Furla, Zecchino d’oro, Disney, following the creative process from concept to creation. She's also a visiting professor at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where she teaches design applied to the arts. Despite her love for traditional techniques, her artwork is mostly digital. Ironically, her dream-like, suspended atmospheres often don't look digital at all. Her first picture book, I Hate My Cats, written by Davide Calì, was published by Chronicle Books in October 2018.

Pierdomenico Baccalario has been writing children’s novels since 1997, when he won the Il Battello a Vapore literary prize with La strada del Guerriero (The Way of the Warrior) using his neighbour’s name. Since then, his bestsellers have been written under as many pseudonyms (the best known being Ulysses Moore and Irene Adler), translated into more than thirty languages and published with major Italian and foreign publishers. He has collaborated with Lucca Comics & Games for more than twenty years, has written for Repubblica, and is a columnist for the newspaper Corriere della Sera’s La Lettura literary supplement. In 2014, he founded the Book on a Tree creative agency in London.