Kate Milner
Kate Milner studied illustration at Central St Martin’s School of Art and Design in London and her works have been published in magazines and shown in London galleries and national touring exhibitions. After a number of years raising her family and working as a librarian, Kate returned to illustration through a place on the MA at Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University. My name is not Refugee began as a self-driven personal project while in the last year of her degree. My name is not Refugee was inspired by Kate’s daughter beginning a career as a teacher and by Kate’s own experience as a political campaigner. The brief she set herself was to address all the complexities of the European migrant crisis for a young but inquisitive audience.
The book won a Victoria & Albert Illustration Award in 2016. The judges said, ‘Despite its grave subject matter, it is illustrated with a cheerful anarchic quality that shows Milner’s indebtedness to the great illustrators of the past including Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman and Ronald Searle.’ The judges praised Kate’s pencil and ink sketch-work with post-editing and colouring in Photoshop, her ‘expressive characters’ and her ‘most delicate use of line, shape and colour palette’. In 2016 Kate established the Twitter account @ABagForKatie, inspired by the film I, Daniel Blake. The account is a campaign to provide sanitary products for women using food banks.
Moreover, the book was selected for the Klaus Flugge Picture Book Prize 2018 and a candidate for Kate Greenaway Medal 2018.