Eric Velasquez was born in Spanish Harlem and grew up in Harlem. He earned his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and has been illustrating for over 30 years. He has illustrated over 30 children's books; his first picturebook, The Piano Man by Debbie Chocolate, won the Coretta-Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. In 2010, Eric was awarded an NAACP Image award for his work in Our Children Can Soar, which he collaborated on with 12 notable illustrators of children's literature.

Eric also wrote and illustrated Grandma's Records and its follow-up Grandma's Gift, which won the 2011 Pura Belpre Award for illustration and was nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award. His latest book, Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford, won the 2018 Walter Award and Golden Kite Award and was an International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention. Eric lives and works in New York, where he teaches book illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology.