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íslenska

Áslaug Jónsdóttir

Bio

Áslaug Jónsdóttir was born on March 31 1963. She grew up on the farm Melaleiti in Borgarfjörður in the west of Iceland. She did her secondary studies at Menntaskólinn við Hamrahlíð in Reykjavík, graduating in 1983. She studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Craft from 1984 - 1985 and then went abroad for further studies. She was a student at Skolen for Brugskunst - Danmarks designeskole in Copenhagen, graduating from the department of drawing- and graphic art in 1989. Áslaug has also taken several art courses in Iceland, Sweden and in the United States.

Since her graduation Áslaug has worked as an illustrator, graphic designer, writer and visual artist. She has written and illustrated numerous children's books and taken part in exhibitions in Iceland and abroad. She has also been a teacher at various art courses and given lectures at The Akureyri University, The University of Iceland, for Ung in the Faroe Islands to name a few. Áslaug has also written and illustrated children's programs for television. She was a news reporter for Morgunblaðið newspaper from 1996 - 1998 and wrote columns for the newspaper Dagur in 1998 as well as doing illustrations for the paper.

Áslaug has received numerous awards for her work. She is a two time winner of the Dimmalimm Prize (The Reykjavík City Illustrator's Award) and she won the West-Nordic Children's Literature Prize in 2002 together with Andri Snær Magnason for their book Sagan af bláa hnettinum (The Story of the Blue Planet), and she was awarded the Icelandic Literature Prize for best children's book in 2017 for Skrímsli í vanda (Monsters in Trouble).

Author photo: The Reykjavík Museum of Photography.