Jessica Love @jessicalove88

The world was forever altered when Jessica Love, a tenderhearted author-illustrator, introduced Julián Is a Mermaid. Born in 1982 and raised in Southern California, she grew up among artist parents whose crafts shaped her earliest sense of beauty and possibility.

Driven by her artistic upbringing, she studied visual art (printmaking and illustration) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, then honed her dramatic talents at Juilliard School, graduating in 2009. For over a decade she performed in theater - on and off Broadway - living the unpredictable life of an actor, often working side jobs between performances.

Beyond the spotlight of the stage, she carried a private passion: she painted, sketched, and quietly crafted stories. The transition came slowly. Between roles she began to draw and write. Holding on to that inner spark, she spent years working between jobs on a story about a boy who dreams of becoming a mermaid. The result was her debut picture book, released in 2018 by Candlewick Press: Julián Is a Mermaid.

A key aspect of her journey was resilience. Initial rejections nearly silenced the work she treasured - until a singular moment when an editor at Candlewick unearthed her submission and breathed new life into it. That courageous leap from rejection to acceptance marked the transformation of her personal sketches into a public declaration of compassion and identity.

With Julián Is a Mermaid she introduced a tender, non‑didactic celebration of identity, acceptance, and love - illustrated in warm ink, gouache, and watercolor on brown paper. The book earned her the Stonewall Book Award, the Klaus Flugge Prize and an Honor from the Ezra Jack Keats Award for illustration.

She continued to build on that world with Julián at the Wedding (2020) and A Bed of Stars (2023), each blending poetic images and human warmth. Her art now lives not on stage, but in classrooms, homes, and libraries - offering solace, wonder, and a mirror to children who seek themselves in stories.

A key aspect of her later life was motherhood: while pregnant with her son she created A Bed of Stars, imbuing it with deep longing, hope, and tenderness - a gift she envisioned as a beacon for her child. Today she lives in the Hudson Valley (Rhinebeck / Brooklyn‑area), sharing her life with her partner and son.

Jessica Love's journey from actor to acclaimed children's book author‑illustrator shows how solitude, patient craft, and vulnerability can reshape the world of storytelling. The path Jessica Love forged continues to illuminate the possibilities of bold, original thinking, proving that hope and acceptance can be born from quiet courage.