About Us


The Cuddlefish Academy is an

Advanced Online Illustration

and Writing School.


We help children's book illustrators and authors break into traditional publishing and maintain thriving careers with personalized coaching, mentorship, and self-guided classes designed to level up your skills quickly. Our professors are successful and award-winning children's book author-illustrators passionate about helping you succeed in today's competitive market.



irregular shape that says a school for kidlit illustrators
Image of four illustrated versions of stan yan, man in hat and glasses, Lily, dark hair light skin on floral background, kaz windness wearing bat ears and glasses light skin, Heather sitting on chair drawing painterly background, jessica as a child painting backgrounds


Jessica Lanan, Heather Brockman Lee, Lily Williams, Kaz Windness, and Stan Yan are working professional authors and illustrators who have taught illustration, mostly at higher ed accredited universities. This dynamic duo of being a current working professional and hands-on educational experience makes the Cuddlefish Academy team an elite group of people to get your children's book ready!

Bringing a wide range of experience to The Cuddlefish Academy classes, these instructors have a breadth of illustration knowledge to share. With additional experience in sales, the animation industry, fine arts, and more... we are here to get your portfolio ready and empower you for the next steps of your career!

Find us on social media and around the internet via our linktr.ee.

Meet your instructors

Heather, a smiling woman with light, shoulder-length hair and light skin in front of bookshelf background
Heather Brockman Lee

Heather Brockman Lee believes that stories have the power to help us understand each other and the world. She has won Portfolio awards for her illustrations, and books she illustrated have received such honors as a Dolly Parton Imagination Library selection for When you Love a Book written by Kaz Windness, Norther Lights Book Awards 2023 winner - Best Picture Book All Ages and 2023 Lee Bennett Hopkins Hobor Book for A Poem Grows Inside you written by Katey Howes. Clients include Harper Collins, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. She is an adjunct professor of Illustration at RMCAD. Her Illustrations can also be seen in the books She is Mama, Hattie Hates Hugs, and the upcoming City of Jasmine, and will debut her author/illustrated work with Poppy's Umbrella in 2026.


Find out more at HeatherBrockmanLee.com.


Check out Cuddlefish Academy classes by Heather.


Kaz a woman with light skin and pink hair and smiling in front of a bookcase
Kaz Windness

Kaz Windness is the author-illustrator of picture books Swim, Jim! and Bitsy Bat, School Star, which received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and BookPage. She created the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Level 1 Ready-to-Read Graphics book Worm and Caterpillar Are Friends, which received a starred review and is a Junior Library Guild selection, and the Level 1 Ready-to-Reads Cat vs. Vac and Go! Go! Dino!. Kaz is also the illustrator of Ollie, the Acorn, and the Mighty Idea by Andrew Hacket and the author of When You Love a Book, illustrated by Heather Brockman Lee. When she’s not writing or illustrating books, Kaz teaches illustration at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design and enjoys making deep-dish pizza. Kaz lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband, two children, and Boston terrier.


Visit her at WindnessBooks.com.


Check out Cuddlefish Academy classes by Kaz.

Man with glasses medium dark skin and flat cap wearing a suit and tie
Stan Yan

Stan is an award-winning, first generation American-born-Chinese, Denver-based writer, illustrator, caricature artist and instructor.
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He helped to co-found the Squid Works comic creator cooperative, was a board member of the Colorado Alliance of Illustrators and is currently the co-Regional Advisor for the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (RMC-SCBWI), and a member of the Cuddlefish Gang art “cuddlective.”
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His late middle-grade graphic novel, THE MANY MISFORTUNES OF EUGENIA WANG is being published by Atheneum (S&S), scheduled for Fall '25.


Learn more at www.stanyan.me.


Check out Cuddlefish Academy classes by Stan.

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Professional professors

From Title 1 Colorado public schools to higher education institutions, all of the Cuddlefish Professors have taught (and currently teach) elsewhere. Your hopes and dreams are in good hands with any one of us.