LYNDA BARRY

“Barry is not just a storyteller, she's an evangelist who urges people to pick up a pen — or a brush — and look at their own lives with fresh, forgiving eyes.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found that they are very much alike. She lives in Wisconsin, where she is associate professor of art and Discovery Fellow at University of Wisconsin Madison.

Barry is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip that was syndicated across North America in alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook's Comeek, featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. Her cartoons and graphic novels “have broadened the psychological dimensions of the format and demonstrated an uncanny capacity to depict the intense emotions of adolescence” according to the MacArthur Foundation that awarded her a 2019 MacArthur Genius Grant. “Exuberant and generous as a teacher, Barry is removing the barriers that usually prevent people from writing and drawing and enabling artists and non-artists alike to take creative risks.”

Her other honors include the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award, the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Work (for WHAT IT IS) and was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame for Comics in 2016. She is currently Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.