Leanne Shapton is an artist, art director, illustrator, designer and publisher based in New York City. She is the co-founder, with photographer Jason Fulford, of J&L Books, an internationally-distributed imprint specializing in art and photography books. Leanne grew up in Toronto and attended McGill Univesity and Pratt Institute. After working at Harper's magazine and for illustator James McMullan, she began her career at the National Post where, by the age of 25, she was overseeing and art-directing the daily Avenue page, an award-winning double-page feature covering news and cultural trends. She went on to become art director of Saturday Night, the newspaper’s weekly news magazine.
She has subsequently worked as a freelance designer at The New York Times, an editor for an art magazine prototype at Condé Nast, and contributied illustrations to New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Jane, Talk and The New York Times Op-ed page. She has designed and illustrated numerous book covers for Knopf, Doubleday, Simon and Schuster and Penguin.
In 2003, Leanne published her first book of drawings, titled Toronto, and in 2006 Farrar Straus & Giroux published Was She Pretty?, a well-received and widely-reviewed book of stories and drawings around the theme of sexual jealousy. Also in 2006 Leanne designed the titles and credits for The Squid And The Whale, the Oscar-nominated film directed by Noah Baumbach; she has also designed titles for his film, Margot At The Wedding. Other film work includes designing DVD covers for The Criterion Collection. She is presently at work on a new illustrated novel for Farrar, Straus & Giroux and a second collection of drawings. Leanne contributes a regular travel column to Elle magazine, consisting of writing, photography and illustration. When not working for publication, she makes drawings, paintings, wooden books, and creates designs for textiles. Leanne Shapton is represented by The Wylie Agency.