Half-French, half-Italian, Yan Nascimbene shared his childhood between these two countries. After working as a photographer's assistant in a Paris fashion studio, Nascimbene studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and at the University of California at Davis. There he met Joan Parazette, an art student as well.

Yan and Joan married in 1972 and moved to the South of France, then to Rome where they started a children's book publishing company, POMPELMO EDITORE.
The following ten years were spent alternating between Davis, Paris and Rome with occasional trips to the South of France and Morocco where in 1976 they adopted their daughter Noémie. Their son Amanzio was born a year later in California.

In 1980 Nascimbene wrote and directed THE MEDITERRANEAN, a feature film which was selected to several international festivals (Gent in Belgium, Turin in Italy, San Sebastiàn in Spain, Park City and Chicago, Melbourne, New Delhi...) He was subsequently commissioned by the French CNC to write the screenplay to a second film, BELLE-ILE. Nascimbene and his family moved back to Paris.

In 1986 Nascimbene started working as an illustrator in France. Soon a steady collaboration with the prestigious French publisher Gallimard was established. To this date Nascimbene has published six books with Gallimard and drawn over 200 book covers for that company alone. His book covers for Gallimard received the Graphic Award at the Bologna International Book Fair in 1988.

Joan and Yan moved back to California in 1991. While still collaborating with French and Italian publishers, Nascimbene started working on editorial and commercial assignments for clients in the United States. Among the several books published at the time, one of Yan's dearest projects was an illustrated edition of Marcel Proust's DU CÔTÉ DE CHEZ SWANN (SWANN'S WAY) which received high praise, notably from Jacques Fauvet, editor in chief of Le Monde and Anne Borel, president of Les Amis de Marcel Proust. ANTIBES, CLAVIÈRE ET AUTRES COULEURS (Gallimard, 1991), Nascimbene's first book as author and illustrator (an illustrated memoir of his childhood in France and in Italy) won the Graphic Award at the Bologna Book Fair in 1992.

Nascimbene's illustrations have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, the New Yorker, Boston Globe, Toronto Life, Scientific American, Atlantic Monthly, Hemispheres, etc. His commercial clients include Air France, British Airways, Continental Airlines, IBM, Apple, Macy's, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Bank of America, United Way, Estée Lauder, Manpower, etc...

Nascimbene has over 50 books to his credit, translated in eight languages. He has illustrated over 300 book covers for numerous publishers in the United States, France, Italy and Japan. (Please, see BIBLIOGRAPHY)

"Twenty-five years ago, as I started working as an illustrator, a young girl wrote me to tell me that she liked my drawings. I thanked her.  The girl has grown and has become a publisher. A few months ago Hélène Chan-Ok Charbonnier contacted me to do a book.  She told me that she kept the postcard that I had sent her years ago. The book is now out.  The story, tender and direct, tells of Ariane, a little girl from Korea, adopted like its author, Jee-Yung, like her publisher, Hélène Chan-Ok, like my daughter of Moroccan origin, like my Nigerian sister and brother.  One day a young girl wrote me that my drawings were as beautiful as a fruit.  It might have been another young girl, or perhaps it was Héléne."

Yan's work has been widely exhibited in the United States, France, Japan, England, Switzerland and Italy.  He is the recipient of many awards,  including a gold and two silver medals from the Society of Illustrators in New York and the Bologna International Graphic Award which he won three times.

Following the acclaimed illustrated edition of Italo Calvino's AVENTURES (Seuil, 2001, Society of Illustrators' Silver Medal) and PALOMAR (Seuil, 2003), Yan recently illustrated THE BARON IN THE TREES by the same author. (Please, see illustrations for these books under PORTFOLIO/ITALO CAVINO. For more information on Italo Calvino, please visit www.themodernword.com ).

Yan Nascimbene and Joan Parazette, a painter and ceramist, share their life between the South of France and California.