Alan Snow is an English author and illustrator of children's literature, born in 1959 in Kent, England. He is best known for his best-selling novel Here Be Monsters! (2005), which was adapted into a stop-animation film by Laika under the name The Boxtrolls, released in 2014.

Snow grew up in the county of Wiltshire and studied fashion design and illustration at the Salisbury College of Art. After college, he worked in a variety of different jobs before becoming primarily an author and illustrator of children's books. Since then, he has illustrated over 160 books and worked on the art design of video games and animation movies as well. Moreover, he was involved in the design of a children's science museum in Japan.

In 2005, Snow published his novel Here Be Monsters!, which he illustrated himself with over 500 drawings. The novel, also published in three separate volumes, is the first part of the Ratbridge Chronicles. The Ratbridge Chronicles are a series of novels and stories set in the fictitious Victorian city of Ratbridge, in the underground of which the boxtrolls live. The second book of the series, Worse Things Happen at Sea, was published in 2010.

Alan Snow is an award-winning children's book illustrator and designer, who has won numerous awards for his work as an illustrator as well as for design and computer animation.