Elaine Szewczyk

In 2006, visual artist, bookmaker, and writer Audrey Niffenegger moved into a Victorian-style house on the Northwest Side of Chicago and, in the two decades since, she has turned it into a creative haven, filled with drawings, paintings, handmade books—and lots of taxidermy. Niffenegger has a bell jar with two stuffed white doves, a South African porcupine, a tortoise, a rhea, an ermine, and a silver fox that sits atop a bookcase.

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... When people think about French Polynesia, they often picture shimmering blue water and gorgeous beaches. Tahitian Chinese author Manuia Heinrich, who was born in Nouméa, New Caledonia, and now lives in New Zealand, wants readers to know the real South Pacific, a richly diverse cultural region with a dark history of French occupation and nuclear testing.

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... Growing up in Chile in the 1990s and early 2000s, Fernanda Frick H. was a quiet girl with big dreams. When she was 13, Frick H. was gifted a pirated DVD of the Japanese animated classic Spirited Away, and, after watching it, she decided to become an animator—no matter what it took. She immersed herself in online tutorials and read secondhand animation books that she found on eBay.