Spaces of Overlap
Featuring: Dr. Salma Ali
“I…want to challenge the notion that you have to stick to one discipline or career, even. Some of the most innovative work emerges in the spaces where disciplines overlap.”
Dr. Salma Ali, this month’s featured guest, beautifully illustrates this point in her embrace of design, children’s literature, and visual art. These spaces of overlap ripple out, too: in the way she uses creations and memories from her childhood to collaborate with another version of herself, and how, as an author-illustrator, she explores her experience as the daughter of Egyptian immigrants to create work that represents readers who can relate to her experience, and also reaches those for whom it might – at least on the surface – be unfamiliar.
This feels so critical to me, now more than ever, this effort to recognize, share, and celebrate differences and contradictions between ourselves and others – and even within ourselves. Whether the focus is biological or cultural diversity, differences in thought or ways of living, by seeking to understand and learn from people (and other organisms!) with perspectives different from our own, we can help each other imagine new possibilities for the world we’re all creating.
Featuring: Dr. Salma Ali
Welcome, Salma! What sort of work do you do?
I am a children’s author-illustrator, youth-centered designer, and information scientist by training. Currently, I am working toward my debut as a traditionally published picture book author-illustrator.
In my various lines of work, my love for children’s storytelling is the thread that weaves through them all. My Ph.D. explored approaches to designing innovative solutions with youth that center their lived experiences and interests. This led me to a postdoctoral role at NASA, where I managed research on collaborative design, until my team was impacted by budget cuts. That moment, coupled with becoming a mother, was a turning point for my career.
What other factors have led to your current work?
Growing up, I knew I always wanted to make art and tell stories. I attended a visual arts school and placed in national art contests by National Geographic and Scholastic. The passion was there but I didn’t have a clear pathway into an art career, and illustration was not yet on my radar. As the daughter of immigrants, stability and academics were also of utmost importance. I was interested in STEM, so that path seemed more realistic and viable. But even within my scientific research, I found ways to weave in my love for children’s storytelling.
Now, I bring all my interdisciplinary experiences across science, art, and writing into my career in children’s books. A highlight this year was receiving the Diversify Science Scholarship for Illustrators from Boyds Mills (formerly Highlights Foundation), which will allow me to visit campus to hone my craft and build community. I look forward to documenting my experience at Boyds Mills over on my Substack!
I’d love to hear more about how your identity and perspective have contributed to the path you are on.
Both my professional and cultural backgrounds greatly shape my work.
I come to picture books through a nontraditional, interdisciplinary path spanning academia, government, and industry. Many of those experiences inform my current work, such as my research alongside youth, exposure to various STEAM topics, and understanding of how to work collaboratively within a team to create a product.
I’m also the proud daughter of Egyptian immigrants to America. Growing up as the only Arab and Muslim student at school made me keenly aware of the importance of representation and own-voices stories. I was born and raised in Virginia Beach, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay. Because of this, I feel a deep connection to marine, coastal, and wetland ecosystems, which inspire a lot of my work, along with animals, space, and the natural world more broadly.
Is there a particular scientific or environmental problem that feels important to you? What do you do about that?
Climate change and pollution are important to me, not only in how they universally impact both human and non-human species, but also how they further pronounce existing disparities and inequities rooted in longer histories of colonialism, segregation, and extraction.
During my Ph.D., I partnered with an organization focused on environmental justice education with teens in Baltimore, specifically around the “Black Butterfly,” coined by equity scientist Dr. Lawrence Brown, and unequal access to green space in historically redlined neighborhoods.
I designed a participatory activity where teens brought in a personal object, shared its story, and then used that as a starting point for imagining environmental interventions. One of the examples that stayed with me was a student who brought in a basketball, and used that to symbolize the pollution he inhales every time he plays outside. That story inspired him and his peers to research transportation pollution. It also shows the power of storytelling as a vehicle for further inquiry and change.
What other aspects of your work feel important to you?
I’ve always been passionate about representation, partly because I didn’t see myself in the stories I read growing up, and also because there is a wealth of cross-cultural, native, and Indigenous ways of knowing and stories that deserve to be shared more widely.
In my author-illustrator work, it’s important to me that I represent my community in a positive and authentic light, and for underrepresented children to see that they, too, can pursue careers in illustration, writing, and science. I also want to challenge the notion that you have to stick to one discipline or career, even. Some of the most innovative work emerges in the spaces where disciplines overlap.
One of the joys of my Ph.D. was the work I did with children and teens from underrepresented communities in urban centers including Baltimore, the DC metro area, and Chicago. For many, it was their first time being exposed to design methods and getting to apply them across interdisciplinary topics such as environmental justice, inclusive technology, and STEM education.
How are science, art, and writing part of your work?
What I love about picture books as an art form is how they combine the narrative with the visual. And many of the stories I’m working on, across fiction and nonfiction, are grounded in scientific themes.
Although it’s a creative endeavor, there’s a lot of analytical thinking involved in creating a picture book. For example, because the book has to be distilled down to its purest form, it requires problem-solving around things like the narrative arc, pacing, visual style, and composition. The art and writing have to work together seamlessly so that the whole is greater than the individual parts, while also keeping in mind the central question of how well the book will resonate with children.
How do you approach creating a book?
Research is a big part of the process of creating a children’s book. It’s important to read and analyze books in the genre you’re working in, much as you would in your field for a dissertation. Studying mentor texts and finding comparable titles is an additional aspect. In terms of the art in particular, finding the right references to develop characters and scenes takes a lot of research.
My scientific career has definitely informed my work as a children’s author-illustrator, and picture books are a really exhilarating way of bringing together science, art, and writing that is so different from academia.
What is something you had to train yourself to see, and how did that shift your practice? (Sefi George)
One of the most helpful shifts in my art practice came from learning the difference between local color and perceived color in color theory. Once you see it, it becomes hard to unsee.
Local color refers to the expected color of an object under neutral light, while perceived color is the color that appears under various lighting conditions. For example, while a banana is often seen as just yellow, its perceived colors might include blues, purples, and reds depending on the light. Applying this in practice has really improved my work, and sometimes I challenge myself when I’m out and about to figure out the perceived colors of objects in my surroundings.
Who and what influences and inspires you?
I’m inspired by my own childhood, both in terms of reconnecting with my childlike self and emotions, but also tapping into the experiences, ideas, and drawings I made when I was younger. Many of the stories I’m working on now have grown out of those early fragments. I always encourage kids not to throw their work away if at all possible, because one day it might come in handy.
I also look to other artists and illustrators for inspiration, particularly those who I feel connected to not only through their work, but also through their personal lives. For example, I relate to Ezra Jack Keats and Gyo Fujikawa, who were children of immigrants to the United States and created their work during a time when their communities faced heavy discrimination. Despite that, they helped pave the way for greater representation in children’s books.
In addition to their personal stories, I’m drawn to artists who observed and cultivated close relationships with the natural world. For example, Claude Monet was a passionate horticulturalist whose understanding of light, color, and atmosphere was largely shaped by his own garden he designed. Beatrix Potter was a naturalist and conservationist who preserved thousands of acres of the English countryside. Frida Kahlo also incorporated native plants and animals from her garden in her work. And Hayao Miyazaki uses his films to critique the impact of militarization, industrialization, and mass consumerism on the environment.
I also admire the work and stories of more recent author-illustrators such as Juana Martinez-Neal, Grace Lin, and Oge Mora, and am constantly inspired by countless other author-illustrators who have shown me that this path is possible.
Are you interested in collaborating with other groups or individuals on science-art-writing projects?
Of course! I’m always excited to collaborate on illustration projects, both within children’s publishing and across other formats like magazines, posters, greeting cards, stationary, and anywhere else where my style might help bring an individual or organization’s vision to life.
I’m also currently looking for the right publishing home for my work, and would love to connect with literary agents, editors, and art directors who see the creative and market potential in my stories and are interested in working on them together.
Thank you, Salma! If you’d like to learn more about Salma and her work, you can find her online on her website, as well as on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Substack.
Upcoming Art-Science Exhibit
You are invited to Creature Conserve’s Re-Inhabiting Conservation exhibit at GoggleWorks in Reading, Pennsylvania! This is the third exhibition in a series that “re” considers the role of artists in wildlife conservation and explores the possibilities of art informed by science. The show includes artwork by 38 visual artists and 13 writers from 11 countries, and will be on view May 22 through July 26, 2026.
I’m delighted that Cerulean, a collaborative project between Hawk Mountain Sanctuary land stewards/artists Brandie Garner and Noah Rauch, and me, will be included in this exhibit. Cerulean is a stop-motion animation video inspired by a restored area of the same name located at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.
Thanks to everyone at Creature Conserve, especially Director Dr. Lucy Spelman, Curator Heather McMordie, and Curatorial and Production Manager Deanne Fernandes!