I’ve been a working, published writer for about twenty years now, but I’ve been drawing and making up stories for as long as I can remember.

I grew up outside of Albany, New York and I live not far from there today. I went to college at Alfred University, then graduate school at the University of Buffalo. I have a studio in my home which I share with my wife, Christy, and several animals, including two horses, a dozen chickens, two cats, some fish, and a dog.

When I’m not working on illustration and children’s books, I spend my time teaching as a professor in Albany, NY, where I’m the chair of the Art + Design Department. Often, an idea will come to me from something I read, or maybe a movie I saw. It could be from a conversation I had with someone, or from someplace I visited on a trip. (In other words, the ideas can come from just about anywhere.) But most of my ideas seem to have one thing in common: at first they don’t work. Usually, I’ll be very excited about a new idea, and I can’t wait to get started on it. About halfway through something will happen—I’ll lose interest, or maybe confidence—and I’ll put the whole project aside. If the idea was any good, it will reemerge somewhere down the road, maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few years. Somehow, the truly good ideas always float to the surface eventually.

Check out Matthew McElligott’s original artwork on the front of this calendar.