Karla Kuskin

Karla Kuskin (née Seidman) (July 17, 1932 – August 20, 2009) was a prolific American author, poet, illustrator, and reviewer of children's literature.

Kuskin was known for her poetic, alliterative style.

She sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Nicholas J. Charles.

Kuskin reviewed children's literature in The New York Times Book Review.

Born in 1932 in Manhattan, New York, Karla Seidman was the only child of Sidney and Mitzi Seidman, and was raised in Greenwich Village, New York City.

She attended the Little Red School House, followed by Elisabeth Irwin High School.

She then attended Antioch College in 1950–53, and transferred to Yale University where she studied with, among others, Josef Albers, Herbert Matter and Alvin Eisenman.

She earned her B.F.A in graphic design in 1955 from Yale.

Before working as a full-time author, she worked as an assistant to a fashion photographer, a design assistant, and in advertising.

She was married to Charles M. Kuskin, oboist, from 1955–1979, and in 1989 married William L. Bell, Jr., a lawyer with the Center for Naval Analyses.

Kuskin both wrote and illustrated nearly half of the books credited to her.

Her first book, Roar and More (Harper, 1956), came out of her senior graphic arts project at Yale to design and print a book on a small press.

Kuskin wrote Paul in 1994, with paintings by Milton Avery, which had originally been created for an abandoned children's book, to go with a (now lost) story by writer H. R. Hays, nearly thirty years after the painter's death.

Her autobiography, Thoughts, Pictures, and Words, with photographs by her son Nicholas, was published in 1995.

She lived and worked in Brooklyn for most of her life, moving to Bainbridge Island, Washington, then settling in Seattle at the end of her life.

In August 2009, Kuskin died of corticobasal degeneration in Seattle, at age 77.