Peter Sís (Author, Illustrator)

Peter Sís is a Czech-born American author, illustrator, and filmmaker born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1949, who grew up under Communist rule and studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and the Royal College of Art in London. In 1982, he defected to the United States during a film project for the Los Angeles Olympics, was granted asylum, and began a distinguished career in children's book illustration, earning the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2012 and a MacArthur Fellowship.