About Dennis
DENNIS NOLAN
Dennis
Nolan was born in San Francisco, California. After attending Bay Area schools, he earned a BA degree in
Art History and an MA degree in painting from San Jose State University. A variety of jobs followed, including
painting for galleries, illustrating biology textbooks, and animating
films. He taught illustration at
San Jose State University before moving to New England to form a new
illustration major at the Hartford Art School at the University of
Hartford. He is currently teaching
both the undergraduate and graduate level, the later in the Low Residency MFA
in Illustration program overseen by director Murray Tinkelman. He teaches courses in drawing,
perspective, anatomy, watercolor, and book illustration on all undergraduate
levels, and introduces the thesis project to the first year students in the MFA
program. His first book was published in 1976. Several of the books that he has
written and illustrated have been singled out for recognition. Among them are The Castle Builder, winner of
the Prix de Zephir in France; and Dinosaur Dream, a
season’s choice in both Newsweek and New Yorker, and an SCBWI Golden Kite Honor
Book. He has illustrated
T.H.White’s classic The Sword in the Stone, and two of Bruce
Coville’s retellings of Shakespeare”s plays, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and Romeo
and Juliet, along with numerous other books, including titles by
Jane Yolen, Ann Turner, Diane Stanley, and William Hooks. He collaborated with author and
illustrator Lauren Mills on the illustrations for her story Fairy Wings, winner
of the SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and returned to the primeval past in Shadow
of the Dinosaurs, which he wrote and illustrated. Among recent publications are an
illustrated biography, St. Francis of Assisi, by
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Skywriter, by Dennis Haseley, and his own
wordless picture book, Sea of Dreams.
