Aya Morton grew up in rural Oregon where she wrote and illustrated many stories, mostly about talking animals. She went on to study at Brown University where she majored in Religious Studies, traveling extensively in India and southeast Asia. Aya received an illustration degree from The Art Center College of Design in 2007. Since then she has lived and worked as a freelance illustrator in London, Hong Kong, and now in Portland, Oregon. She is the illustrator of His Dream of the Skyland: The Walled City Trilogy (Book One) (Top Shelf Productions), a saga of ambition, loyalty, and the walls we build both inside and out, animating historical 1920s Hong Kong with powerful modern resonance. In 1925, Hong Kong struggles with growing pains. Two destructive Opium Wars have transformed what once was a sleepy tropical inlet into a bustling international crossroads, full of risks and wonders. When Song Lu starts his new job as a Dead Letter Carrier, the curious teenager is drawn to the mysterious Walled City of Kowloon, a lawless urban enclave and haven for refugees… but an alarming trend of missing children will drive him deeper and deeper into the city’s secrets. Emmy Award-winning writer Anne Opotowsky and stunning artist Aya Morton present “a multi-tiered tale of fleeting innocence, child theft, criminal acquisition, opium addiction and the earliest days of Kowloon’s illegal ghetto.” (Shelf Abuse)
