David Gavril was born in New York City and grew up in Chappaqua, New York. He began drawing at an early age, creating his first comic books while in elementary school. Throughout grade school he was a prolific cartoonist and his first published comic strips about a frog named “Ribbit” appeared in the town newspaper while he was in 5th grade.
In high school his interest in the arts expanded as he began to study photography, literature, music, film and writing. He still created comics and an occasional cartoon would appear in his high school paper. After spending a summer studying at Rhode Island School of Design, he began to focus on photography. He continued this focus in a semester abroad in Florence, Italy and at Hampshire College, where he concentrated on documentary photography and stopped drawing altogether.
After college he moved to Cambridge, MA, where he fulfilled his childhood dream of working in a fish store. It was at the fish store while making signs advertising the soup of the day that he began drawing again. Inspired by folk artists such as Howard Finster, he soon was creating his own mini-comics and self-publishing them in the fertile 90’s Boston underground comic scene. Soon he found better-smelling work, first as a scenic painter, then as a house painter and landscaper, property manager and much more.
Upon rediscovering the work of one of his childhood favorites, William Steig, he became interested in trying his hand at children’s books. Soon he began submitting his work to publishers. In 2001 he returned to New York City, where he sold his first book, Hector and the Noisy Neighbor, while also working as a photographer’s assistant. It was drawn in a room the size of a small closet, with little heat and the occasional snowflake falling through the skylight onto his desk.
His second book, Penelope Nuthatch and The Big Surprise, was published in 2006. His latest book, Chicken Soup, is a collaboration with renowned children’s author Jean Van Leeuwen, who also happens to be his mother. He currently lives in slightly less shabby digs in Park Slope, Brooklyn with his fiancé Vanessa Muncrief.
