Lauren Nalepa (she/her) is an art teacher and illustrator with a passion for visual storytelling. Having been raised on Tolkien-esque fantasy and Agatha Christie, her tastes run to speculative fiction and mysteries. Always artistic, she’s been in love with illustration since she first saw Brett Helquist’s pieces in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events books, and spent hours poring over them to find the clues he'd hidden to the next book.

She graduated with a BFA in Visual Art Education from Michigan State University in 2016 and currently teaches high school Comics and Photography courses.

She lives in the Metro-Detroit area with her two cats (one perfect, one gremlin) and a dog (her big baby.)