Greetings friends my name is Zeke. I’m a storyteller and cartoonist from El Paso, TX.
Thanks for taking the time to look at my work. If you're an art director, designer or editor I'd love to hear from you about collaborating on something. I’m currently interested in requests for picture book projects, short comics or short series, interior illustrations for chapter book stories, book covers, and editorial illustration. I’m also available for book and graphic novel projects depending on the pub date. Please reach out, I’d love to hear about what you’re working on and how we can collab!
PUBLISHERS, EDITORS, & ART DIRECTORS of BOOK PROJECTS please contact Steven Malk (Writers House)
I represent myself for all these fun activities:
Art Direction + Creative Consultation
Editing + Story Development
Comics + Illustration
Script Writing + Adaptation
Character Design + Storyboarding
Community Campaigns + Engagement
*LIMITED AVAILABILITY* - Currently my availability for new freelance projects is closed until March 2025. If you’re working on a project with a deadline in Fall 2025 or after please contact me.
BOOK BIO
Zeke Peña is a professional doodler and an aspiring time traveler. He is Xicano, born in the Chihuahuan desert, and grew up in a place called Sun City. His debut author/illustrator picture book, Sundust will hit shelves in summer 2025. You can find more of his work on the pages of the NY Times Bestselling book Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel. He has also received several awards for his book illustrations in My Papi Has a Motorcycle and Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide. Zeke currently lives in NW Arkansas where works in a tiny studio that is an old closet.
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. He illustrated the NY Times Bestselling book Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel and his debut author/illustrator picture book, Sundust will be published in Summer 2025. He received a degree in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and is self-taught in the studio. He has received several awards for his book illustrations and his work is in several collections of American and Latine art including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of Mexican Art, and The Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum.
PLEASE EMAIL FOR PRESS PHOTO
Please message for CV, Press Requests, Academic bio and Inquiries.
For all book, comic book, graphic novel inquiries please contact my literary agent Steve Malk at: smalk@writershouse.com
Selected Publisher + Client List
Penguin Random House | Penguin Young Readers / Kokila| ProPublica | Atheneum / Simon&Schuster | Scholastic | Getty Publishing | The Ringer | Crown Books | NPR Latino USA | Holt-Macmillan | Algonquin Young Readers | The Nib | REMEZCLA | The Believer Magazine | Cinco Puntos Press
PRESS
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
Bank Street's Best Spanish Language Book Award
Leila Fadel | Samantha Balaban on Weekend Edition Sunday | August 25, 2019 8:06 AM ET
Publishers Weekly – ★ Starred Review
Booklist – ★ Starred Review
School Library Journal – ★ Starred Review
Review of My Papi Has A Motorcycle by Lettycia Terrones - The Horn Book – ★ Starred Review
Picture Books to Enrapture Little Readers and Listeners - by Maria Russo - The New York Times Book Review – Review
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. ”
2018 Boston Globe Horn Book Award
2018 Moon Beam Book Award
“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.”
Review of Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide - The Horn Book Magazine September/October 2018 -
A Gathering of Minds: A Hopeful and Incisive Bank Street Book Festival - By Matia Burnett | Publishers Weekly - Oct 30, 2018
2019 YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens
NPR Best Books of 2018
Booklist Top 10 Arts Books for Youth: 2018
One of School Library Journal’s Best Books of 2018
“Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the [people] who can.”