Meet the author

Mike Schley.

Illustrator · United States

Mike Schley: American cartographer-illustrator whose detailed fantasy maps anchor the world-building of Wings of Fire and other middle-grade fantasy titles. Better known in tabletop RPG circles.

Mike Schley is an American illustrator and cartographer whose primary children's-book role is creating the detailed fantasy maps that appear in the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland and other middle-grade fantasy titles. Schley is best known in the wider illustration world for his fantasy cartography on Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks and other tabletop role-playing properties, which gives his children's-book maps a serious world-building credibility. His role on the books in this corpus is map illustrator rather than interior or cover artist. Niche by definition, but a meaningful signal of the world-building investment behind the series his maps appear in.