Roz Chast

Living Art Award Recipient

Less than a year after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Roz Chast delivered a portfolio of cartoons to The New Yorker Magazine without expecting anything to happen, but the magazine asked her to come back—and added the 23-year-old to their roster of artists.  The New Yorker has continuously published her work ever since. Chast quickly became a beloved and witty chronicler of our anxieties, superstitions, fears, and surreal imaginings. 
 
Her most recent book, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” addresses the realities of getting old in America. Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? was a New York Times 2014 Best Book of the Year, a 2014 National Book Award Finalist, and the winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize. It was also the first graphic memoir to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, redrawing the map of possibilities for the cartoonist’s art

Roz Chast has published several collections of her cartoons. She has also written and/or illustrated many books for children, including Too Busy Marco, Now Everybody Really Hates Me, and Around the Clock. She also collaborated with humorist Steve Martin on The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!.  She recently illustrated Calvin Trillin's new book titled No Fair! No Fair! And Other Jolly Poems of Childhood, scheduled for October 2016, and collaborated with Daniel Menaker on The African Svelte: Ingenious Misspellings that Make Surprise Sense, also scheduled for October 2016.

Chast lectures widely and has received numerous prestigious awards including honorary degrees from Pratt Institute and the Art Institute of Boston.  In 2013, she was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, she was nominated for the Eisner Award and received the Reuben Award from the National Cartoon Society. She also received the Heinz Award for bringing “wry humor and wit to some of our most profound everyday anxieties, brilliantly translating the mundane into rich, comical observations.”

Chast grew up in Brooklyn and lives in Connecticut with her family and two parrots.

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Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs
Museum of the City of New York
April 14 - October 9, 2016
Explore the absurdities and pleasures of daily life through the eyes—and pen—of Roz Chast
http://www.mcny.org/