About Gary Gianni: Gary Gianni began as an illustrator for Chicago newspapers and as a courtroom artist for television. He has received the Eisner and Spectrum awards and has illustrated books by authors ranging from Melville and Stevenson to Robert E. Howard, Michael Chabon and Ray Bradbury. His comics include The Shadow with Michael Kaluta, Batman with Archie Goodwin, Tom Strong with Alan Moore and Indiana Jones. He is also known for his own mystery comic book The MonsterMen. Gianni teamed up with Mike Mignola to craft the graphic novel Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea, and he drew the syndicated newspaper comic strip Prince Valiant with Mark Schultz for eight years. Gianni has produced the paintings for George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire calendar as well as illustrations for Martin's novel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. He continues to work with Martin to illustrate future collections. About George R.R. Martin: George R.R. Martin sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally ever since. He spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer-producer, working on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. In the mid-'90s he returned to prose, his first love, and began work on the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. He has been in the Seven Kingdoms ever since. Whenever he's allowed to leave, Martin returns to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with the lovely Parris and two cats named Augustus and Caligula, who think they run the place. About Cullen Murphy: Cullen Murphy is the editor-at-large of The Atlantic. For twenty-five years he wrote the comic strip Prince Valiant, working with his father, the illustrator John Cullen Murphy. He is the author of Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe.
"""My love affair with illustrated books began when I was a boy, with artists like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth, who helped to bring King Arthur and Robin Hood to life for me. ""When I grew up to be a writer, I always dreamed of having my own works illustrated in the same splendid fashion. ""In the past few years, I've been lucky enough to have that dream come true. I've had the honor of having my world and my characters depicted by some of the greatest fantasy artists of all time, and high on that list is Gary Gianni. Working with Gary has been a joy and a privilege. His line drawings, his color plates, his covers... they are all gorgeous. They make me feel as if I am looking through a window into Westeros, that I am there with Tyrion and Daenerys, with Ned and Arya, with Dunk and Egg. ""In this new collection, Gary has put together all of his Westeros art, including some work never before published. It's a beautiful book, one to delight my own readers and fans of fine art both."" --George R. R. Martin"