Maritza Ruiz-Kim is a Bay Area artist and writer who specializes in children’s literature. Her current projects include picture books, an early reader graphic novel, and a hybrid illustrated middle grade book. She has published comics and an illustrated essay in MUTHA Magazine. In prior years, she exhibited her fine art studio work in gallery shows in New York, Miami, Santa Fe, and San Francisco.

Maritza serves on her region’s volunteer team for SCBWI and is a member of The Illustration Department, Storyteller Academy and Kids Comics Unite. In her early childhood, she lived down the street from Disneyland (nighttime fireworks viewing while sitting on the roof!), and just when she imagined herself going out with friends to do fun things, her parents moved to the middle of nowhere, aka Southern California's Mojave Desert. To remedy this, a couple years later she moved north to attend the San Francisco Art Institute to earn a BFA in New Genres. She’s lived in the Bay Area ever since and she actually stays at home as much as possible (it’s cozy!), having settled in the Diablo Region with her husband, two sons, and two smoosh-faced dogs.

To take a look at Maritza’s fine art work, feel free to deep dive > here.

Her exhibition & publication history can be found > here.