JOHN HAUGSE is an award-winning professional animator and filmmaker. His honors include the John Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as awards from the New York and Ann Arbor Film Festivals. He wrote and animated the PBS special Honore Daumier: Witness to a Century, which won the New York Film Festival's gold medal. This Is Not a Museum, a project created by Haugse and partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, won the Baltimore International Film Festival's Cube Award, in addition to receiving other distinctions. Haugse has also enjoyed a long-term creative relationship with Sesame Street. In 1994, he cofounded Animakers, a company that produces commercials for Hewlett-Packard, Sutter Health and the California Department of Health. Aside from these commercial ventures, Haugse maintains an ongoing relationship with PBS and undertakes special projects for the Oregon Tax Check-Off for AIDS Campaign, a nonprofit organization. His personal experiences with Alzheimer's while taking care of his father inspired him to write and illustrate Heavy Snow. John Haugse lives and works in Portland, Oregon.