Meet the author

Zak Atea.

Illustrator · New Zealand

Zak Atea: a New Zealand illustrator whose luminous, colour-soaked art, rooted in a Te Ao Maori lens, brings picture books like The Dream Factory vividly to life.

Zak Atea is a New Zealand illustrator and visual artist whose work spans children's books, editorial illustration, artist-book design and fine art, made through both digital and traditional painting and drawing. Working within a Te Ao Maori lens, she is drawn to the intangibles of the world and the complexities of self, with a distinctive focus on colour, texture and layered, multimedia mark-making. She illustrates Steph Matuku's The Dream Factory, a warm, whimsical fable about the building that powers a town's imagination and what happens when a kereru flies into the works, notable as the first Tate Publishing title written by a Maori author and picturing Maori characters. Her luminous, colour-soaked illustrations make it a rich read-aloud and a lovely prompt for talking with children about dreams and the ideas worth making real.