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MEET LAURA LACAMARA
by Ann Stalcup

Aside from roller skating and swimming, I’d say I was the happiest when I was coming up with my own art projects. I remember drawing a doggy on bright turquoise cloth and cutting it into the pattern for a hand-sewn stuffed animal. In school, my favorite thing to do was to write and illustrate stories and make them into little books. DIAPER-GIRL SAVES THE DAY! was one of my best titles. Once, when I was in 5th grade, my former 4th grade teacher summoned me to her classroom to demonstrate on the board how to draw a rabbit. It was the proudest moment of my grade school career!

When you went to college, were you already pursuing a writing career?
(or a career in illustrating? or just art in general?)

To earn my BFA (in drawing and painting), I went to college in two shifts -- one right out of high school and the other 10 years later. The first time around I went to UC Santa Cruz, the ultimate earth-mama hippie college. To get to my fine-art painting and Iyengar yoga classes, I would walk past deer grazing among the redwoods. “Commercial art” was frowned upon at UCSC -- I remember the shame I felt when one of my teachers commented that my painting was too “illustrative.”
Ten years later, I returned to school (Cal. State University, Long Beach) in order to focus more on my own art, and finish my BFA. By that time, I had been working as a commercial artist creating designs for imprinted sportswear and the giftware market for almost a decade. At CSULB, I discovered printmaking-- which lead me to get involved with Self Help Graphics in East LA, where I attended woodcut and lino-cut workshops for several years. There, among my fellow Latino artists, is where my current illustration style began to develop.
As far as writing, I did well on most of my college papers, and I had always used journaling as a means of self-expression, but I didn’t have any role model of a “career writer.” I did have a professional-artist role model: my father, Carlos Lacámara, who supported our family as a graphic designer and illustrator. For me, the decision to pursue a career as an artist was as natural as breathing.

A few years ago, when a fellow artist suggested that my images would be ideal for picture books, I signed up for a children’s book illustration class. I instantly fell in love with both writing and illustrating for children. In that class, I wrote the first draft of FLOATING ON MAMA’S SONG.

My initial inspiration was to write about my mother, who had been an opera singer in Havana. Imagining illustrating the character’s costumes and the lush tropical setting excited me artistically, but I still didn’t have a story to tell. Then, in the middle of the night, it came to me! What would happen if mama’s singing literally lifted her off the ground? Who in the story would love it and be supportive? Who might feel threatened by mama’s floating and want to stop it? The story flowed from there.

FLOATING ON MAMA’S SONG was chosen as a Junior Library Guild children’s book selection for Fall 2010 and has been recommended by Booklist..

My first two bilingual picture books are coming out this Fall -- one I wrote, and the other I illustrated:

Also, I recently won a contract to illustrate another bilingual picture book, ALICIA’S AGUAS FRESCAS (Piñata Books), which will come out in the summer of 2011.

When you first started creating books for children, did you always intend to illustrate (and/or write) - and were you successful in getting to do both on your first book? (so often writers or illustrators begin by doing one or the other)

In the children’s book illustration class I mentioned earlier, students were expected to finish a black and white ‘dummy’ and one full-color illustration by the end of the ten weeks. Our teacher believed in students illustrating their own stories, so I initially wrote FLOATING ON MAMA’S SONG simply to have something I could get excited about illustrating. HarperCollins ended up buying my manuscript, and they assigned the illustrations to the amazing Yuyi Morales!

Is there anything about yourself that you’d like to share - hobbies, where you were born, special talents other than writing/illustrating, what other jobs you had before you became a writer/illustrator?

I was born in Havana and I was a baby when my family fled Cuba and came to this country. My father was an art director in one of the biggest advertising agencies in Havana. A connection with a bank client resulted in my father obtaining four visas for our family to leave.

I’ve only had one 9 to 5 job in my life, when I was in my early 20’s. I worked at a newspaper office doing paste-up -- the old-fashioned way with wax and a roller. I quit after one week.

Penguins on surfboards helped me establish myself as a freelancer. Working part-time by day at a design studio (again doing paste-up), I drew and colored penguins (surfing, skating, etc..) by night. When I had built a portfolio of 10 pieces, I approached resort-wear companies with my art. The first time out I sold four designs and thus launched my freelance career.

Over the years, I’ve taught Spanish to kids and yoga to adults. Once my daughter came along, I decided to focus exclusively on pursuing children’s book illustration and writing.

MEET LAURA LACAMARA by Ann Stalcup

MEET LAURA LACAMARA
by Ann Stalcup