about
BOOK BIO
Zeke Peña is a Xicano storyteller and professional doodler from El Paso, TX. His author-illustrator debut, Sundust won a Caldecott Honor Award and the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Book Award. He illustrated the NY Times Best-Selling Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel and his other award winning books My Papi Has a Motorcycle and Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide. Zeke earned a degree in Art History from University of Texas at Austin and is self-taught in the studio. He is currently drawing more books in his tiny studio in NW Arkansas or in a creek somewhere throwing rocks with his son.
STUDIO BIO
Zeke Peña is a Xicano storyteller and cartoonist from El Paso, TX. He makes comics and visual narratives that reclaim stories and remix history. His work is a mash-up of political cartoon, border rasquache and Hip Hop culture that addresses identity, politics, ecology and social justice. His book illustrations have received a Caldecott Honor Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Ezra Jack Keats Illustration Honor, Tomás Rivera Book Award, and the Pura Belpré Illustration Honor for his other work. He earned a degree in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and is self-taught in the studio. His work is in several collections of American and Latine art including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of Mexican Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and The Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum.
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COLLABORATE
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR BOOK PROJECTS, SCHOOL VISITS, & EVENTS
If you’re an editor, art director, or publisher, I would love to hear from you about collaborating on something. I’m interested in requests for picture books, chapter book and middle grade interior illustrations, short comics, book covers, and editorial illustration. I’m also available for comics and graphic novel projects depending on the pub date. Please contact my literary agent Steve Malk for book project queries and my availability. If you’re an author please have your publisher reach out. I’m currently not able to work on self-published projects.
If you’re a librarian, educator, or event coordinator I would love to visit your students, audience, and community. My visits are feature a presentation about making books, a live reading performance, and a fun interactive drawing demonstration. Please reach out to talk about visit details, schedule, and pricing using my contact messenger below or by emailing zp@zpvisual.com.
Selected Publisher + Client List
Penguin Random House | Penguin Young Readers / Kokila | Marvel | ProPublica | Atheneum / Simon&Schuster | Scholastic | Holt-Macmillan | Getty Publishing | The Ringer | Crown Books | NPR Latino USA | Holt-Macmillan | Algonquin Young Readers | The Nib | REMEZCLA | The Believer Magazine | Cinco Puntos Press
CONTACT
AWARDS + REVIEWS
Sundust RECEIVED a 2026 Caldecott Honor Book Award! WHAAAAAT?!!
The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
“In a wide-ranging solo debut, Peña imagines two Latinx-cued children exploring a sweeping desertscape where, though bulldozers work “to build/ things that don’t belong,” natural elements “will always grow wild and free.” ”
SUSPENDED: MILES MORALES - A SPIDER-MAN NOVEL written by Jason Reynolds
“Peña’s comic-style illustrations enhance the story by reflecting the Spiderman side of our hero.”
★ STARRED REVIEW
“This sequel is more multilayered than the first installment, with action-packed digital drawings, Miles’s first-person poems, and a third-person narrative all capturing a day in the life of Miles Morales...”
My Papi Has a Motorcycle written by Isabel Quintero
“Quintero’s warm, economical text and the desert-sunset tones of Peña’s comics-inflected art feel like a revelation.”
“The detailed, evocative watercolor artwork and smoothly told story demonstrate the pair’s love for their neighborhood and each other.”
2020 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Award
2020 Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Honor Award
2020 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award
Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide written by Isabel Quintero (photo by Sara Waldorf 2017)
“[The book} revels in the in-between; mixing elements of photo essay, memoir and graphic novel to create a powerful biography that – like Iturbide herself – defies convention. ”
“Quintero and Peña’s biography of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide is far more than an account of her life . . . Eye-opening and masterfully rendered.”
“I would recommend this book to pretty much anyone… There’s darkness and death; but it’s not a morbid story. It’s about learning to find who you are and be brave and true to yourself, and finding beauty in forgotten places and people.”
“Mixing original illustrations, first-person prose, and lyrical interludes with gorgeous reproductions of photographer Graciela Iturbide’s work, Quintero and Peña patiently reveal their subject’s many angles, producing a “kaleidoscopic unraveling” of the artists… Teens will come away with an evolved sense of how to look at a creator’s life and work and how to think critically about art as a process. The importance of being seen, specifically in regard to indigenous communities in Mexico and Mexican Americans in the United States, as a narrative thread will resonate strongly with readers. VERDICT Quintero and Peña have set a new standard in artist biographies. A must for teen collections.”
“Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the [people] who can.”