Growing up in Baltimore, Kristin always knew she wanted to do something with her love of drawing and painting. She regularly visited the Smithsonian as an artsy fartsy teen. When she got older, she got practical. She thought that the pursuit of the creative dream could be done, but not necessarily with paints and canvas.

She headed for Brooklyn, NY to attend the renowned Pratt Institute, where she studied fashion design, because it was way more practical. Still, it wasn’t quite the right fit {pun intended}. She dropped fashion after 2 long years of draping and tailoring and finished her studies in illustration by drawing and painting and all other means necessary.

Early on in her career Kristin married, and she and her husband started Atomic Paintbrush, a business designed to cater to the niche market of comic books, where they were one of the first studios to provide digital coloring to all the major comic publishers.

While running Atomic, Kristin focused heavily on children’s book illustration and creating characters and stories for animation. Soon enough, her work was published by companies like Simon & Schuster, Harcourt, Highlights, Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Penguin Putnam and Scholastic (see more comprehensive, rather impressive list under 'clients' link). She has presented her animation ideas to production companies like Dreamworks, Film Roman and Nickelodeon and was a finalist for Fox Studios’ Pitch-O-Rama, a one-time event in search of the next Simpson's.

Beyond books and animation, her work has also appeared in magazines, stationery and paper products, off-Broadway shows, websites, clothing hang tags and her mom's birthday cards.

Kristin lives in New York with her husband, writer and comic book artist, Dennis Calero, and their dog Desi.

Member SCBWI.