Rahele Jomepour Bell

Rahele came to the United States in 2011 to pursue her dream of being a free international artist and graduated with an MFA in Integrated Visual Arts from Iowa State University in 2015. As a full-time freelance picture book illustrator, she has been an active member of SCBWI since 2012 and has worked with Cricket Media, children's magazines, since 2016. Her Illustration work was selected as a finalist for the SCBWI Bologna 2016 and shortlisted for the SCBWI Bologna 2018. She has illustrated seven books published by an Iranian publisher in Tehran. She is the recipient of the 2018 Illustration Mentorship Awards from We Need Diverse Books #WNDB. In August 2018, she won the portfolio showcase grand prize award at the SCBWI LA National Conference. She also was the winner of the 2018 SCBWI Social Media Mentorship for Illustrators at the LA National Conference. Laurent Linn and Debbie Ohi were her excellent mentors.

Rahele is originally from Iran and saw the war in her home country when she was just eight years old. Two things could make her black and white world colorful. One was all-night family gatherings at her Grandma and Grandpa’s house every Friday. Her Grandma would tell Rahele fairy tales told her by her mother that was told to her by her mother. Stories she has never found in any book. The other was traveling through books full of images of life and nature made by illustrators from all around the world, such as Zdeněk Miler, Fyodor Khitruk, Bani Asadi, and Farshid Mesghali. She is happiest creating illustrations that make the imagination travel, take a new look at old ideas, and reaffirm the viewer of their natural place in this world.

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