Bologna Children's Book Fair hosts every other year the winners of the most prestigious children’s book awards in the arts.
After Suzy Lee (South Korea), winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2022, the 2024 edition of the Fair presents Paloma Valdivia (Chile), winner of the Grand Prix of the Biennial of Illustration Bratislava (BIB) in 2023.
According to custom, the artist has created the cover for the Illustrators Annual that will accompany the 2024 Illustrators Exhibition and his original works will be presented in the artist’s solo exhibition during the Fair.
Paloma Valdivia, illustrator, writer and publisher, was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1978.
After graduating in Design from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, she obtained a post-graduate diploma in Creative Illustration from EINA, the School of Design and Art, Barcelona, Spain, subsequently returning to the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile to study Anthropology and Audiovisual Communication.
To date, Paloma has published over 30 titles, translated into fifteen languages. She is
passionate about books, stories, and images, but especially about childhood, a world we all inhabit, a cherished realm to be preserved above all.
Internationally acclaimed, Paloma has received numerous awards including the 2023
Biennial of Illustration Bratislava Grand Prix (Slovakia), the 2023 Green Island Nami
Concours (Korea), the nomination for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Award
(Denmark), and the New York Times Best Children's Book of 2022 for her The Book of
Questions/El Libro de las Preguntas (USA).
Her most commended works are Los de Arriba y los de abajo (Kalandraka, Spain 2009), Es Así (Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico 2010), Nosotros (Amanuta, Chile 2014), and El libro de las Preguntas de Pablo Neruda (Enchanted Lion Books, USA 2022). Paloma is also a publisher, heading Ediciones Liebre together with Mónica Bombal. Specialising in books for very young children, the company was a candidate for the 2022 Bologna Children’s Book Fair BOP Prize as the best children’s book publisher in Latin American and the Caribbean.