Jo Pestum

Jo Pestum, whose real name was Johannes Stumpe, was born in Essen in 1936 and died in Billerbeck, in the Münsterland region, in 2020. He attended the painting class at the Folkwang School of Design in Essen. His first magazine publications appeared in 1958, and from 1959 he worked as an editor and layout artist, later serving as an editor at various publishing houses. He subsequently worked as a freelance writer, painter, caricaturist, and screenwriter. His diverse body of work includes children’s crime fiction, young adult novels, poetry, anthologies, and nonfiction series. His paintings received several awards, and in 1974 he was awarded a scholarship by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.