Roz Chast (born November 26, 1954) is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. Since 1978, she has published more than 1000 cartoons in The New Yorker. She also publishes cartoons in Scientific American and the Harvard Business Review. In recognition of her work, ComicsAlliance listed Chast as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010. In May 2017, she received the Alumni Award for Artistic Achievement at the Rhode Island School of Design commencement ceremony. In 2024, Chast was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden.

Early life and education

Chast grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the only child of George Chast, a high school French and Spanish teacher, and Elizabeth, an assistant principal in an elementary school. Her Jewish parents were children during the Great Depression, and she has spoken about their extreme frugality. She graduated from Midwood High School in Brooklyn, and attended Kirkland College (which later merged with Hamilton College). She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in painting in 1977. She also holds honorary doctorates from Pratt Institute, Dartmouth College, and the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University; and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Career

Chast's subjects often deal with domestic and family life. In a 2006 interview with comedian Steve Martin for the New Yorker Festival, Chast revealed that she enjoys drawing interior scenes, often involving lamps and accentuated wallpaper, to serve as the backdrop for her comics. Her comics reflect a "conspiracy of inanimate objects", an expression she credits to her mother. Her first New Yorker cartoon, Little Things, was sold to the magazine in April 1978. The cartoon, which Chast describes as "peculiar and personal", shows a small collection of "Little Things"—strangely-named, oddly-shaped small objects such as "chent", "spak", and "tiv". Her New Yorker cartoons began as small black-and-white panels, but increasingly used more color and often appeared over several pages. Her first cover for The New Yorker was the August 4, 1986 issue. Chast has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including Unscientific Americans, Parallel Universes, Mondo Boxo, Proof of Life on Earth, The Four Elements and The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995–2003 (Bloomsbury, 2004). In 2006, Theories of Everything: Selected Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006 was published, collecting most of her cartoons from The New Yorker and other periodicals. One characteristic of her books is that the "author photo" is always a cartoon she draws of, presumably, herself. The title page, including the Library of Congress cataloging information, is also hand-lettered by Chast. Her book, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a graphic memoir, combining cartoons, text, and photographs to tell the story of an only child helping her elderly parents navigate the end of their lives. On October 30, 2024, Chast was awarded a National Humanities Medal by the National Endowment for the Humanities for "deepen[ing] the nation's understanding of the humanities and broad[ening] our citizens' engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities subjects". President Joe Biden presented the medal to Chast.

Personal life

Chast lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut with her husband, humor writer Bill Franzen. They have two children.

Exhibitions

Awards

Articles and comic strips

Books

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