Yaroslava Apollonova, or Yara for short, is a neurodivergent author-illustrator, based in Berlin, Germany. Growing up, Yara devoured encyclopaedias and collected as many random facts about animals as she could find. Somewhere between trying different art mediums and reading about strange animals, Yara realized she wanted to spend her life illustrating meaningful stories and drawing a lot of anteaters.

When Yara isn’t drawing, you can find her baking white chocolate chip cookies; drinking coffee before bed; having deep conversations with her cats, Ciri and Nala; and gathering new ideas for illustrations from documentaries at 3 a.m. You can even find her doing all of these things at once.

Yara is represented by Alex Gehringer — to work with her please email Alex