the short version:

Kris Waldherr is an author, illustrator, and designer whose art has been exhibited in the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She is the author of Doomed Queens, The Lover’s Path, and The Book of Goddesses, and creator of The Goddess Tarot. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

the long version (with links):

I'm the author, illustrator and designer of numerous books, the most recent ones being Doomed Queens, The Lover's Path and The Book of Goddesses. I also created several cards decks including the Goddess Tarot and the Lover's Path Tarot.

I began my publishing career as a children's book illustrator and designer twenty years ago. Since then, my work has expanded considerably. I am fascinated with women's stories, sacred and profane. I've written about goddesses as well as queens and courtesans. Currently I'm at work on a follow up to Doomed Queens as well as a historical novel set in Victorian England.

I have a long-established blog that I post news about my life, publishing, and work on a regular basis. To learn more about my work, you can also sign up for my bimonthly newsletter. It offers extra news about my new publications and exhibitions, as well as subscriber-only freebies, raffles, and gift offers.

More about my books: The New Yorker praised Doomed Queens as "utterly satisfying." The Book of Goddesses was a One Spirit/Book-of-the-Month Club’s Top Ten Most Popular Book. The Book of Goddesses inspired The Goddess Tarot, which has over 200,000 copies in print, as well as a chamber music suite by composer Robert Paterson. My picture book retelling of the Persephone myth, Persephone and the Pomegranate, was praised by the New York Times Book Review in a full page review for its “quality of myth and magic."

Besides all of this, I develop iPhone apps and e-books under my own digital publishing imprint, Art and Words Editions. I've had illustrations published as greeting cards, book covers, and in magazines. My art has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and England, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Ruskin Library, where my art was in the same gallery as Rossetti's Prosperine. The strangest thing I've ever heard about my work? That The Goddess Tarot was the most shoplifted item at the Union Square Barnes & Noble.

I live in Brooklyn, where I have a small gallery that doubles as my workspace. It is open to the public for exhibitions and events. I have a young daughter named Thea. I spend too much time in coffeehouses with her and my husband, the anthropologist Thomas Ross Miller.

In an ideal world, I would indulge in more café society. I'd also have a palazzo in Venice and wear velvet gowns in November.