About

Six years in the making, here is the story behind Gnomes of the Cheese Forest and Other Poems (and its companion volume, Let There Be Owls Everywhere)...

As a kid, I was constantly writing and illustrating my own books. Combining this knack for storytelling with a love for movies & puppets led me to enter the world of animation during my college years. Since the mid-90s I have worked as a traditional animator on several short films for BigFott Studios, taught the craft to hundreds of students, and landed the opportunity to write two instructional books on stop-motion puppet animation.

But all the while, I haven’t been able to ignore the urge to tell my own stories, like I had done as a child.

When my wife and I had kids of our own, I returned with fresh eyes into the children’s books I grew up with, by the likes of Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak and Mercer Mayer. For the first time in many years, I found myself reading the words out loud to them and falling in love all over again with the rhythm of the language, the whimsy of the words, and how they interplayed with the illustrations. Another poetry book called The Tomato Collection by Kevin Kammeraad also lit a spark of inspiration and got me thinking it might be neat to start writing again.

So one day on a complete whim, I started writing poems, and it was like a bottle cork popped off to unleash a gushing of ideas for characters, stories and poetic reflections I didn't even know were inside me. I grew to love playing with the words and re-working them, while sketching ideas for those that would be best served with illustrations.

Hundreds of poems, drawings and ideas filled several sketchbooks, and over the course of many years have crystallized into final form for books I have now independently published (through IngramSpark), starting with Gnomes of the Cheese Forest & Other Poems.  I started this blog back in 2013 in order to document the process, and it's been a fantastic journey. A second book, entitled Let There Be Owls Everywhere, is now complete and available as well.

For the latest and greatest updates, follow me on Facebook & Instagram for book-related happenings, and check out my official website for my books & animation: http://kenpriebe.com/

Any interest in media requests, questions, or coffee, contact me anytime.