Leonard Everett Fisher bridges the worlds of art, literature and professional education.  The 240 books he has illustrated for young readers since 1955 include 90 he has written.  In 1964, the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, incorporated illustrations from his published works in a mural in the Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.  He was a delegate-at-large to the 1979 White House Conference on Library and Information Services.  He has designed a number of United States postage stamps.  He is Dean Emeritus of Paier College of Art, Hamden, Connecticut, and past president of the Westport Public Library. 

Mr. Fisher studied at the Art Students League with Moses Soyer and Reginald Marsh.  He graduated from Yale University’s School of Art with BFA and MFA degrees (1949, 1950), the John Ferguson Weir Prize, and Winchester Traveling Fellowship.  His paintings, drawings, and illustrations can be seen in public collections nationwide, including those of the Butler Art Institute, Mt. Holyoke College, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the New York and Westport Public Libraries, the New Britain Museum of American Art, Housatonic Museum, Brown University, the Universities of Connecticut, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Oregon, and Southern Mississippi, and the Museum of American Illustration (NY).

His work was the subject of two major retrospectives: The New Britain Museum, CT (1973); the Museum of American Illustration, NY (1991).  Among his honors are the 1950 Pulitzer Prize painting scholarship, the Italian Premio Grafico Fiera Internazionale di Bologna, the Medallion of the University of Southern Mississippi, the Christopher Medal, a National Jewish Book Award, the Regina Medal of the Catholic Library Association, the Kerlan Award of the University of Minnesota, and the 1995 American Library Association’s Arbuthnot citation.  In 1998, the Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut which maintains a significant archive of his books, papers and art, published a full-color monograph: Leonard Everett Fisher: A Life of Art, in recognition of his long career and body of work.

Mr. Fisher is a member of the M.F.A. Advisory Board of Western Connecticut State University.