Merve's first memorable drawing was a caterpillar she drew beneath the carpet in her family home when she was about five years old. As a child, she spent every spare moment either drawing or losing herself in the library. A devoted bookworm, she was especially drawn to stories filled with emotion, mystery, science fiction, and delightful oddities that sparked her imagination.

Merve is an author-illustrator dividing her time between Ankara and London. She graduated with Distinction from the MA Children's Book Illustration programme at the Cambridge School of Art in 2025. Before shifting her focus to children's books, she earned both a BSc and an MSc in Education and worked in education.

Working primarily with traditional media, she combines soft and oil pastels, gouache, acrylic inks, coloured pencils, markers, monoprinting, and collage. She particularly enjoys building rich textures and filling her illustrations with small details for readers to discover.

Merve loves creating the kinds of stories she herself loved to read as a child. She enjoys inviting her readers to share a moment of life with her characters-sometimes simply feeling it, sometimes looking at it closely and noticing the details. Above all, she wants her stories to be deeply felt, while always leaving room for the unexpected, the curious, and the wonderfully odd.

Her work has received international recognition, including the Italian Excellence Award (Pinocchio's New Clothes) at the Bologna Children's Book Fair (2026), a shortlist in Plymouth Illustration Awards (2026), a shortlist in the Hiii Illustration International Awards (2024), and a longlisting for the dPICTUS Picturebook Makers Showcase 6 (2025). Her illustrations have also appeared in group exhibitions in London, Cambridge, Shanghai, Ankara, Abu Dhabi, and Bologna.

When she isn't writing or drawing, she is usually binding tiny sketchbooks, experimenting with paper and creating paper mechanisms, learning ceramics and exploring ways to bring her illustrations onto clay, getting lost in a good book, or spending time with her husband, her son, and their cat, Luna.

Website: https://www.mervedilekefe.com/
Instagram: @mervedilekefe