Ted Dewan

Ted Dewan is an American-born British writer and illustrator of children's books who resides in England. He is best known as the creator of the award-winning book series, Bing, now adapted into an animated television series. Dewan was born in Boston and raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, the first son of physicist Dr Edmond M Dewan and scholar/attorney Karen Dean-Smith. He grew up with his brother, musician and artist Brian Dewan and both brothers had musical and artistic aspirations from a young age. He studied engineering and electronic music at Brown University, Rhode Island where he studied with his mentor, author/illustrator David Macaulay, before working for five years as a Physics teacher at Milton Academy. As well as his science-teaching duties at Milton Academy, Dewan directed various musical shows including a touring satirical student pop band. He relocated to London where he began to make a living as a full-time illustrator and cartoonist, drawing for British newspapers including The Times (and Times Educational Supplement), The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph. In his spare time, he performed a solo accordion act on London's comedy circuit, to mixed and "misunderstood" reviews at such venues as The Comedy Store and the Hackney Empire. Within a few years of moving to London, he met Helen Cooper, another children's illustrator and writer. They have one daughter. Dewan and Cooper moved from London to Oxford, where Dewan worked closely with David Fickling Books, the original publisher of the Bing books. His move to Oxford also saw the beginning of an eight-year pilot project to transform his residential street in the UK's only DIY redesign project designed and built entirely by its residents with guidance and funding from Bristol-based Sustrans. He was given stewardship of the writer's shed from Oxford-based author Philip Pullman in 2002, with a covenant agreed that only creative work shall take place in it, and that the shed was to be passed on freely to another maker when the time came.