Rowena Morrill

Rowena A. Morrill (United States, 1944-2021) was an American illustrator known for science-fiction and fantasy artwork. She is regarded as one of the first women to make a notable impact on paperback cover illustration, a field long dominated by men. Her work was widely seen in American publishing and in magazines and calendars.

Born on September 14, 1944, Morrill came from a family of musicians and initially studied music. She left those studies as a teenager when she married a soldier, and began drawing classes at an Army wives' club. She earned a BA from the University of Delaware in 1971 and continued at the Tyler School of Arts in Philadelphia. After leaving Tyler she worked for an advertising agency in New York City, until she showed her portfolio to Charles Volpe at Ace Books, who commissioned a romance cover from her. Her first horror novel cover was for Jane Parkhurst's Isobel (1977).

She continued in horror, producing cover art for H. P. Lovecraft collections, before focusing on science fiction and fantasy. She painted in oil on illustration board, finishing the image with a high-gloss glaze and thin layers of paint. She made covers for authors including Anne McCaffrey, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Samuel R. Delany and Madeleine L'Engle, and her paintings appeared in hundreds of calendars, portfolios and magazines such as Playboy, Heavy Metal and Omni. She was nominated four times for the Hugo Award for Best Artist. Her book The Fantastic Art of Rowena was nominated for a Hugo and a Locus Award in 1983, and she received the British Fantasy Award in 1984. She was Artist Guest of Honor at Chicon 7 (2012), Guest of Honor at the 2017 World Fantasy Convention, and received the 2020 World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.

Her legacy rests mainly on her covers, which remain recognizable to genre readers. She died on February 11, 2021, at the age of 76, after a long period of poor health. A posthumous book of her paintings and drawings was later financed through a Kickstarter campaign.