Ben Hatke

Hatke lives in Front Royal, Virginia, with his wife Anna and their four daughters. (Their youngest daughter Ida died in a horse-related accident in September 2019.) He is an avid player of role-playing games, as well as a practitioner of archery. He is also a fire-eater and amateur tumbler.

In 2016, it was announced that Fox Animation had picked up movie right for the Zita trilogy; the films will be produced by Chernin Entertainment.

Zita the Spacegirl debuted in 2011 with First Second Books. The second and third volumes appeared in 2012 and 2014.

He continued developing the character in webcomics and then a short story titled "Zita the Spacegirl: If Wishes Were Socks," in the 2008 Random House anthology Flight Explorer.

Hatke contributed the story "The Plank" to the anthology Flight vol. 2, published by Image Comics in 2005. His story "The Edge" appeared in Flight #3, published (at that point by Random House) in 2006.

Hatke attended Christendom College, in the Shenandoah Valley, earning his B.A. in 2000. While he was in college, he spent a semester in Italy studying Italian Renaissance painting.

Ben Hatke (born June 4, 1977, in Lafayette, Indiana) is an award-winning, best-selling American cartoonist and children's book illustrator. He is most well known for his series of middle grade graphic novels Zita the Spacegirl. His work is notable for its focus on strong female characters.