Speaker Biographies

Mark Crilley

Raised in Detroit, Mich., Mark Crilley began drawing almost as soon as he could hold a pencil in his hand. Upon graduating from college in 1988, he embarked upon a series of jobs teaching English in the Far East. It was while living in Japan, in the fall of 1992, that he invented Akiko and fashioned her first adventure, a 33-page comic book story entitled "Akiko on the Planet Smoo." Sirius Entertainment, of Dover, N.J., published the story as a one shot in December of 1995, with a new series, entitled "Akiko," to be launched the following spring. In those first years of creating comics, he managed to produce new issues of Akiko at a rate of 10 or more per year, and found a small but dedicated readership among comics fans.

In 2000 Random House Children's Books invited him to write and illustrate a series of novelized adaptations of "Akiko" for young readers. The first in the series, "Akiko on the Planet Smoo", was published in March of 2000; the tenth, "Akiko and the Missing Misp", hit stores in November of 2008.

In 2004 Random House published his first new creation since Akiko, "Billy Clikk: Creatch Battler." The second book in the series, "Billy Clikk: Rogmasher Rampage," hit stores in the fall of 2005.

Crilley's latest creation, the four-volume manga series "Miki Falls," was published by HarperCollins over a period of just eight months from 2007 to early 2008. Kirkus reviews called it "stellar" and the American Library Association put it on their official list of recommended graphic novels. It has since been optioned for film development by Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt's Plan B production company.

Crilley lives in Michigan with his wife, Miki, and children, Matthew and Mio.

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