Scott Chantler was born in Deep River, Ontario, Canada, and still hates the cold.
He grew up in St. Thomas, a small Ontario city best-known for having run over Jumbo the elephant with a train.
He began his career creating visual art for Fortune 500 companies. In 2000, he found himself fulfilling his childhood ambition of working in the comics industry, first as a pioneer in the webcomics scene, then with the publication of his first graphic novel, Days Like This with writer J. Torres. Days Like This would be nominated by the American Library Association as one of its “Best Books for Teens” in 2004.
After a second book (Scandalous) with Torres, which garnered him a Russ Manning Award nomination, Chantler began pitching his own material, with immediate success. His first solo work, Northwest Passage, was nominated for an Eisner Award, the industry’s highest honour, as well as two Harvey Awards, three Joe Shuster Awards, and a Doug Wright Award.
More recently, his work has been embraced by book publishers, including Kids Can Press, a staple of the children’s book scene, releasing his all-ages fantasy adventure series Three Thieves (the first book of which, Tower of Treasure, won the Joe Shuster Award for Best Comic for Kids in 2011) and Canadian literary institution McClelland & Stewart publishing his graphic memoir Two Generals, which was based on his grandfather’s experiences in the Second World War. It was nominated for two Eisner Awards, two Joe Shuster Awards, the Ontario Library Association’s White Pine Award for Non-Fiction, named as one of Chapters-Indigo’s Best Books of 2010, excerpted in Best American Comics 2012 (edited by Francoise Mouly) and listed by readers in CBC Canada Reads: True Stories as one of the top 40 Canadian non-fiction books of all time.
Chantler was honoured to be a guest speaker at TEDxWaterloo 2012, the largest licenced TEDx event in North America. He was also featured on the October 2010 cover of Canadian literary magazine Quill & Quire.
He still lives in Waterloo, Ontario, with his wife and two young sons. He is presently working on the fifth Three Thieves book, Pirates of the Silver Coast.
Scott Chantler is this year’s Writer-in-Residence for the Department of English at the University of Windsor.