Family Workshop: Spooky Characters Mix and Match

Mayhem! Chaos! Mischief!

Join author illustrators Steve McCarthy, Erika Meza and Flavia Z. Drago to discover the art of Cadavre Exquis.

Explore this collaborative drawing game and get creative as we work together to design brand new weird and wonderful creatures inspired by Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

Come ready to laugh, draw, paint, and build with other families.

When he was older he learned how to make animated feature films, and later took a job making background paintings for the Oscar nominated 'Song of the Sea'. One day he decided he would like to live in London, so he moved there, and he started making picture books, his first book 'The Wilderness' came out in 2022 and has won several impressive prizes, but more impressively, in London Steve met his pals Erika and Flavia. Steve does not currently own a dog, so if you have one he would like to meet them.

In order to do so, Flavia moved to the UK and joined the MA in Children’s book illustration at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. Her debut picture book, 'Gustavo the Shy Ghost' (2020) became a New York Times bestseller. It was followed by 'Leila the Perfect Witch' (2022) and 'Vlad the Fabulous Vampire' (2023). Nowadays, her love and interest in monsters and the macabre inspired her to do a PhD researching horror in the childrens' picture books. Flavia tries to make books that reflect her interests and background, which bring joy and reflect the things that she would have found exciting as a child.

After studying graphic design, she moved a few more times over to Paris to study a bit of illustration (she met Flavia there), and then to the UK until finally landing in London (she met Steve there). She now lives with a toddler who thinks he's a puffling and a comedian who thinks he's a pharmacist; she makes illustrations for other people's books (like Love Ssega's 'The Elementals'), and she is working on making her own books (like her own 'To The Other Side', which came out in 2023). Erika can't resist a cup of coffee, a bit of chocolate or a lovely little honey cake. Sometimes all together.