51. From Falling in Love with Comics to Writing Graphic Novels—Dan Santat, Author + Illustrator

Prolific author, illustrator, and graphic novelist Dan Santat chats with The Lambert Center’s Jason Blitman about his process of writing and illustrating picture books, how writing graphic novels is his way of creating his own movies, and the catharsis of writing his memoir, A First Time for Everything. Dan Santat is the Caldecott Medal-winning and New York Times-bestselling author and illustrator of The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend and the road trip/time travel adventure Are We There Yet? His artwork is also featured in numerous picture books, chapter books, and middle-grade novels, including Dav Pilkey's Ricky Ricotta series. Dan lives in Southern California with his wife, two kids, and many, many pets.