Meet the author

Stephen Hogtun.

Writer & illustrator · Norway

Stephen Hogtun: creator of Leaves, Deep and Herd — glowing, tender picture books that hold memory, love and growing up gently for the very young.

Stephen Hogtun is a writer and artist based on the west coast of Norway, where he lives by a fjord with his family and a menagerie of rescue animals. His luminous picture books take large, tender subjects — memory, mortality, growing up, belonging — and hold them gently for the very young. In Leaves, a wise old tree raises a tiny sapling and uses falling leaves as a soft metaphor for the loved ones we carry with us; its companion Deep follows a whale calf and his mother from first breath to independence; and Herd sends a brave little elephant out with his family to learn that home is the ones who love you. Hogtun's glowing, hand-textured artwork makes these quiet, emotionally generous books a beautiful choice for sharing at bedtime.