Circle Yuen (阮絡伶) is a UK-based author-illustrator originally from Hong Kong. Her work centres on children navigating moments of family change, attending to silence, rupture, and the shifting nature of belonging.
Current & Upcoming Works
Her debut picture book, Our Dance (Graffeg, 2025), was developed in partnership with the National Association of Child Contact Centres (NACCC). It was shortlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize 2026 and selected for The White Ravens 2026 by the International Youth Library.
Her second picture book, Mama’s Wedding (Lantana Publishing, 2026), considers remarriage and the shifting shape of home through the eyes of two sisters. Alongside her own writing, she is also the illustrator of Oakie (Graffeg, 2026).
Recognition & Education
Circle holds an MA in Children’s Book Illustration from the Cambridge School of Art, with a background in Cultural Studies.
The White Ravens 2026, International Youth Library
Klaus Flugge Prize 2026 — Shortlisted
Bologna Illustrators Exhibition 2024 — Finalist
Golden Pinwheel Young Illustrators Competition 2024 — Finalist
Featured Press
The Guardian (2026) | Children’s and teens roundup: the best new picture books and novels
Mama’s Wedding featured in The Guardian’s selection of new children’s and teen books.
Resonate (2025) | Circle Yuen’s ‘Our Dance’: Addressing Family Change for UK Kids
South China Morning Post | Five Asian Women Rethinking Gender Equality
Artist Statement
I make picturebooks for the feelings children carry without words. Most of my books are about family change: separation, remarriage, distance, and love that has to find new ways.
When my daughter once asked, “Mummy, where is Daddy? I miss him so much,” I had no language for her. What I found instead was Babette Cole’s Two of Everything, and we read it again and again, not because it explained our situation, but because it stayed beside us within it. That was the moment I understood what a picturebook could do. Not explain. Simply: stay.
I like to draw feelings rather than simply illustrate what is happening. I often work with what is left out: a falling cup, a cropped page, a silence between words and image. I don’t want the pictures to take difficult feelings away, only to give them somewhere to rest.
Before picturebooks, I spent over a decade in social work and gender-based violence advocacy in Hong Kong. That work taught me to listen to what people could not yet say. My MA at Cambridge School of Art, and my research Illustrating Trauma, gave me a visual language for it.
For people living through a storm, art can bring a little light. I think that is at the heart of my work.
Contact
Publishing Inquiries: Amy Milligan at Illo Agency amy@illoagency.com