Sue Pickford - illustrator

Sue Pickford - author/illustrator

About Sue Pickford

Sue was born Ying Yee Cheung in Nottingham in 1971. She was given her English name to make it easier for the other children at school to remember!

She grew up in the very colourful environment of a Chinese restaurant, where the best thing was the never-ending reams of plain A4 paper that the menus were printed on, secretly tucked away in a cupboard. Somehow she always managed to get her hands on some and with the help of a borrowed ballpoint, escaped into her own scribbled-out worlds. Whenever the paper ran out, she drew on pavements, on the blank edges of newspaper and on the walls of the house - she just couldn’t stop!

At the age of seventeen, she won a scholarship to the London College of Fashion to study a BTEC OND in Fashion Styling, which was a very exciting time. Then afterwards she went on to study a BTEC HND in Advertising Illustration at Newcastle College of Art. This eventually led to a job as an Art Director in the rich, diverse hubbub of London which she did for thirteen years and loved every minute.

But her dream was to eventually live by the sea to write and illustrate children’s books (her favourite things in the world besides pomegranates and open fires). And believing that dreams are made to come true, she now happily lives and works in Bournemouth with her outdoor adventurer husband and permanently hungry cat (or is that the other way around?) in a white, terraced cottage with a pillarbox red door.