Bats Langley

Bats Langley is a painter, sculptor, writer, illustrator, toy designer, and a creator of many things. Most recently, Mr. Langley illustrated the nonfiction biography of Jackie Kennedy titled Jackie and the Books She Loved, distributed by Simon & Schuster. Mr. Langley is a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) grad. He is a regular contributor to Spider, Ladybug, Cricket, and Scholastic magazines and has been a frequently featured cover artist. Bats is the creator of GUS, and his art has been shown in galleries in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Hartford, Providence, Hangzhou China, and at The New Britain Museum of American Art and the United States Capitol building. Mr. Langley's work was exhibited at the AFA Gallery in NYC and in Vegas for many years and shown alongside some of his idols: Maurice Sendak, Tim Burton, Charles Adams, Dr. Seuss and Charles Schultz. Mr. Langley is the illustrator of the picture book Groggle's Monster Valentine and it’s sequel, Groggle’s Monster Halloween, on Sky Pony Press/Simon & Schuster, and was the author/illustrator of Alice’s Adventures in #Wonderland. Bats also did the cover art for Scary Stories to Tell on The Pod, a podcast hosted by head Saturday Night Live writer Anna Drezen and the Miracle Workers and Best Foot Forward writer Andrew Farmer. This cover art was shown on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

Today, Mr. Langley lives in a cozy, but spectacular apartment in the shadow of the Chelsea Hotel on the island of Manhattan, with his husband, Nicholas, and their two plants, Lily and Idina. Mr. Langley and Nicholas were married, surrounded by loved ones, in a dear friend’s haunted castle in the south of France.

In his free time, you will find Mr. Langley cooking, reading, being a LGBTQ and body celebration activist, and watching owls swoop in his backyard, which live in sanctuary on a neighbor's roof. He enjoys ghost stories, biology, medical curiosities, queer zines, modern painting, museum visits, oddities, theater, fashion, old movies and book collecting.