Katy Towell is a native midwesterner who now lives in New Jersey with a bunch of carnivorous plants and her tuxedo cat Nozky. An animator, illustrator, designer and author, Katy dreams of one day being the scary old lady in the haunted house about which all the neighborhood kids tell ghost stories.
Katy got her start with the animated YouTube series "Childrin R Skary" for grownups and has since written and illustrated two middle grade horror novels: Charlie and the Grandmothers (Knopf, 2015) and Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow (Knopf, 2011).
Her literary influences include Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury and Maurice Sendak. Her artistic influences are mainly late 19th/early 20th century illustrators like Harry Clarke and Kay Nielsen. She loves anything old-timey and uncanny. Her favorite books as a child were the ones she had to hide from her parents, and she aims to create the same for kids today.
She is currently working on more books and podcast episodes while continuing to publish short animations and narrated stories on YouTube.
(That's Nozky back there.)