Vashti Harrison

Harrison's films are experimental and rooted in Caribbean heritage and folklore.^[5] Her films have been screened at the New York Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival. She uses public appearances to offer advice for aspiring artists.^[6]

• Field Notes (2014) is a visual guide to the spiritual culture of Trinidad and Tobago. Harrison shares her own stories about shape-shifters and bloodsuckers, alongside the ghosts of the islands' past.^[7][8][9] In 2014 it won Best Local Short Film at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival. It was nominated for the Best Short Film at the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival.^[10]
• Sixteen (2015) the coming-of-age story of Harrison's mother; a metamorphosis from a difficult childhood to beautiful adulthood.^[8] It premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2015, where it was nominated for Best Short Film.^[11][12]
• Forged from the Love of Liberty (2016) is a poem about curses and superstitions, named after the anthem of Trinidad and Tobago.^[13][14]
• Harrison worked as a character designer on Hair Love (2019), a Pixar-style animated short which celebrates a positive black father-daughter relationships through the usage of black hair.^[15][16][17] The film received $284,000 Kickstarter funding, after a campaign headed by NFL wide receiver Matthew Cherry.^[18] Hair Love won Best Animated Short Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. Harrison also illustrated a children's book based on the film.^[19]

Harrison used Instagram to get her first artistic commissions, through this meeting Apple which led to live drawing on iPads in New York.^[20][21] She was inspired to create children's picture books after moving back to Trinidad and Tobago.^[22] In 2016 Harrison attended the SCBWI Mid-Atlantic Conference, where she entered and won a drawing competition "Draw This!" to have her illustration shared to all their industry partners.^[23][24] This was the beginning of her illustrating and writing career - two months later, she had an agent - Simon & Schuster.^[25] Harrison illustrated Surishtha and Kabir Sehgal's Festival of Colours, the story of Holi, released in 2018.^[26] Her illustrations also appear in Cece Loves Science by Kimberly Derting and Shelli R Johannes.^[27] Her book (as illustrator) Sulwe won a 2020 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Children category.^[28] In 2024, her book (as author and illustrator), Big, was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal.^[1]

The bestselling book Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History tells the story of 40 African-American women who shaped history.^[29][2][30] Harrison says that she was inspired during Black History Month, when she began to illustrate and write about black women from American history.^[31] The book was picked up by the publishers LittleBrown Books, and has both a UK (March 2018) and US (Dec 2017) version.^[31] The book includes the stories of Mae Jemison, Katherine Johnson, Maya Angelou and Alice Bell.^[32] It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award before it was released.^[22] In January 2018 Vashti Harrison appeared on the Daily Show to discuss Little Leaders.^[33]

Official website