Meet the author

Dawud Anyabwile.

Illustrator · United States · b. 1965

Dawud Anyabwile is an Emmy-winning comics artist whose kinetic, swaggering art brings acclaimed verse to life in graphic novels such as Kwame Alexander's The Crossover.

Dawud Anyabwile is an American illustrator and comics artist, born in Philadelphia in 1965 and long based in Atlanta. He first made his name in 1990 co-creating the pioneering independent comic Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline with his brother, the writer Guy A. Sims, and went on to a career in animation before returning to the page. He is best known now for his bold, kinetic graphic-novel adaptations of acclaimed prose: he illustrated Walter Dean Myers's Monster and, most notably, Kwame Alexander's Newbery Medal-winning The Crossover, giving the rap-and-rhyme rhythms of that basketball story a visual pulse to match. An Emmy Award-winning artist, Anyabwile draws with swagger, movement and real tenderness, work that turns verse and prose into propulsive comics and makes a superb gateway for readers who love sport, hip-hop cadence and a story that hits hard.