Emily Haworth-Booth
- Faculty
Biography
Emily Haworth-Booth is an author and illustrator. Her debut novel MARE (Granta, 2026) won the Mslexia First Novel Prize in 2024. Emily's illustrated books for children include The King Who Banned the Dark, The Last Tree, and PROTEST! How People Have Come Together to Change the World, co-authored with her sister Alice Haworth-Booth. Her picture books have been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration. Emily has an MA in Children’s Book Illustration from Anglia Ruskin University and a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University. Her comics have been published in The Inking Woman (Myriad, 2018), the Guardian, the Observer and Vogue. For her graphic novel work, Emily has received funding from Arts Council England, alongside a Hawthornden Fellowship. She is a previous Foyle Young Poet and winner of the Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story Prize. She lives in Devon with her husband, dog, and several horses.
On drawing
When we're making work in a professional or art school context and become focused on what our drawings look like to others, it can be easy to forget how nourishing the simple act of drawing can be, no matter what the final product is, or whether we even get there. Yet it's true that there is also something immensely satisfying, and even healing, in seeing that we have created something on the page, a complete world that is entirely our own but which also connects us vividly to the world outside ourselves. For both these reasons – the process and the product of drawing – it has remained an essential resource throughout my life, allowing me both to accept and rise to circumstances as they occur. Used together, observational and imaginative drawing allow us to perceive the world as it really is and yet re-create our response to it so that we can flourish. As a teacher, I find it immensely satisfying to see students tell their own stories through drawing, and become both the authors and readers of their own lives.
