About the Author

Justine Létourneau

Justine Létourneau is a San Fracisco Bay Area based author and illustrator with an extensive educational background in the arts. Justine blends her two loves of art and writing seamlessly in every aspect of her work. Her writing is visual and tactile. Her artwork is narrative and intriguing. Her books have a timeless quality, enriched by her knowledge of art history, and yet driven by highly contemporary and forward-thinking themes. You won't find another writer like her in the literary world today.

Justine's Arts Education:

Justine majored in Fine Art at San Francisco State University, splitting her time between oil painting and sculpture and taking as many creative writing electives as she could. While acquiring her degree, she also worked part-time in the Poetry Archives office at SFSU, assisting with organizing poetry events and processing analog material orders from the University’s recorded archives of 50+ years of poetry readings.

“As an admin at the archives, I had the freedom to check any archival items out at any time. I remember taking analog recordings of Allen Ginsberg’s San Francisco readings home, popping in the cassette tape in my old tape player, and falling asleep to the sound of his voice. I loved imagining what my home city was like during the beat era,” says Justine. 

Throughout her adolescence, Justine also attended art charter schools & fine art magnet schools, always majoring in visual arts.

Justine's Travels:

After college, she toured with Cavalia, a Cirque Du Soleil affiliated equestrian dance performance company, studying the art of storytelling for stage through dance. She also visited Paris, France and Florence, Italy during her adolescence to study Fine Art, and Ireland during college to study Folk Music.

Justine's Teaching Experience:

After traveling for many years throughout the US and Canada, Justine decided to settle down back in the SF Bay Area she knew and loved. She moved to Santa Cruz and began teaching private music lessons in voice, piano, and guitar at Mountain Music School in 2018. When the school shut down temporarily during the pandemic, Justine switched to coaching private lessons for adults in both music and fine art.

In 2020, she was a co-director and designer of a preschool summer arts program at the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross, CA. In 2021, she was hired by through Youth In Arts, a Marin-based non-profit that gets qualified art teachers in public schools that lack funding for arts education. She began teaching visual art at a public elementary school in San Rafael, CA. There, Justine taught and managed 8 classrooms, averaging over 400 students per week. Justine incorporated art history into the lessons, teaching students about many art movements throughout the past two centuries. 

Justine's Editorial Services:

Throughout her time in college, traveling, and teaching career, Justine has always kept a consistent side-hustle in freelance, offering Illustration, Graphic Design, and Editorial Services. She has explored this line of work for the past 15 years and has recently began pursuing it full time.

"I love editorial design and I love working with authors. This line of work is also highly conducive to pursuing my own art and writing, which is very important to me. I feel very connected to my client-base as an author myself. I understand their struggle and their vision," says Justine. 

In recent years, Justine and her mother, Liz Mckague, have formed a book team covering all the bases when it comes to Editorial Services. Justine handles all of the design, layout, photography, and marketing; and Liz handles all of the editing, story development, query writing, and publishing aid. 

Justine's Writing:

Since her higher education, world travel and teaching career, Justine's knack for the art of language and life experience in visual art has manifested into a career as an author & illustrator.