David M. Cornish (born 1972) is an illustrator and fantasy writer from Adelaide, South Australia.
Cornish studied illustration at the University of South Australia, where in 1993 he began to compile a series of notebooks: over the next ten years he filled 23 journals with his pictures, definitions, ideas and histories of his world, the "Half-Continent".
It was not until 2003 that a chance encounter with a children's publisher gave him an opportunity to develop these ideas further.
Abandoning all other paid work, he spent the next two years propped up with one small advance after another.
Cornish illustrated The Sunken Kingdom series, which was written by Kim Wilkins.