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San Antonio Book Festival - Zeke Peña
Photo Courtesy of the Author
Book Festival Author

Zeke Peña

Zeke Peña is a Xicano storyteller and professional doodler from El Paso, Texas, the Sun City. Zeke was an Illustrator Honoree for the Ezra Jack Keats Award and the Pura Belpré Award for My Papi Has a Motorcycle, and he received the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for his illustrations in Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide. He also illustrated the New York Times bestseller Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel. He is currently drawing more books in his tiny studio in Northwest Arkansas. 

Sundust, his author-illustrator debut, is a love poem to desert culture and people and is a 2026 Caldecott Honor title. 

More About Zeke Peña

  • Sundust

    Following a blazing trail of sundust, two curious siblings hop the wall into a place that’s endless and free. Here, prickly old nopal trees beg to be climbed, empty turtle shells invite a closer look, enormous rocks model how to sit still and listen, and a colibrí offers an unexpected ride. In the desert, where life revolves around the Sun, brother and sister explore, imagine, and wonder, What if Sun’s power was inside me? until their mom’s whistle calls them back home again.

    With spare, lyrical text, Pura Belpré Honor and Ezra Jack Keats Honor recipient Zeke Peña has created a fantastical tale that suspends moments in time with his radiant art and celebrates the bonds between the sun, the desert, and its people.

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