Photo Credit: Craig Semetko

Liza Donnelly is a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine, writer and public speaker, having spoken at TED and The United Nations among other places. Her cartoons have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1982, at which time she was the youngest and one of only three women cartoonists at the magazine. Ms. Donnelly’s work has appeared in many other national publications, including The New York Times,Harvard Business Review, The Nation, Audubon, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, National Lampoon, American Photographer, Scholastic News, Cobblestone, etc. She does a regular feature cartoon for womensenews.org, and has written and drawn cartoons for CNN.com, DailyBeast, HuffingtonPost, Slate and wowowow.com, revolvingfloor.com, dscriber.com, TONEaudio.com; has worked for Oxygen Network and Parenting Magazine. Many collections of cartoons include her work, and she has exhibited in numerous group shows throughout the country.  Donnelly is founding editor for World Ink, on dscriber.com, and cartoon editor of  RevolvingFloor.com. Her blog is on whendotheyservethewine.com.

Ms. Donnelly’s most recent book is When Do They Serve The Wine? (Chronicle)  wrote a history of the women cartoonists of the New Yorker, titled Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, (Prometheus Books), October 2005. It is widely considered a must have for historians of the magazine and cartoon fans. Donnelly wrote an article on New Yorker cartoonist Helen Hokinson that appeared in a November, 2002 issue of The New Yorker. She wrote and edited Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love in 200 Cartoons (Twelve Books, 2007) is about love and sex today as viewed by 10 prominent women cartoonists.

In 2009, with her husband Michael Maslin, Donnelly wrote Cartoon Marriage:Adventures in Love and Matrimony with the New Yorker’s Cartooning Couple (Random House). They were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning and Better TV.

Ms. Donnelly conceived of and edited three collections of cartoons for Ballantine Books called Mothers and Daughters,  Fathers and Sons and Husbands and Wives (the last two with Michael Maslin). Husbands and Wives and another collection for Andrews and McMeel entitled Call Me When You Reach Nirvana were collections of Ms. Donnelly’s and Mr. Maslin’s cartoons. She has illustrated numerous adult humorous books as well.

In the area of childrens’ books, Ms. Donnelly wrote and illustrated seven books for Scholastic, Inc. They are: Dinosaur Day, Dinosaur Beach, Dinosaurs’ Halloween, Dinosaur Garden, Dinosaur Thanksgiving, Dinosaur Christmas, Dinosaurs’ Valentine. The series sold over two million copies.

Donnelly is a pubic speaker/lecturer and presents on topics such as women and humor, childrens’ books and The New Yorker, and has given talks at TED, the Thurber House, and the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists annual convention, Vassar College, Bard College, Omega Institute, The Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art, The Norman Rockwell Museum and elsewhere. She has been a guest panelist at the Cartoon Event of The New Yorker Festival several times. Ms. Donnelly and her husband were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning and on New Channel Four New York’s Sunday Morning. Donnelly  has also done numerous radio and blog interviews.

In 2007, Ms. Donnelly was invited to participate in an initiative called Cartooning for Peace, begun by French cartoonist Jean Plantu. The ten cartoonists spoke at the United Nations, and, with the accompanying exhibition, travel worldwide speaking to groups about freedom of speech, global issues and cartooning and peace. The group has appeared in Atlanta, Paris, Rome, Brussels and hope to travel to Istanbul, Ramala and Australia. Ms. Donnelly, Plantu and Michel Kichka are working on a book about the initiative with Emory University.

Ms. Donnelly is a member of PEN, the Authors Guild (since 1984), and was a founding member of the Cartoonists Association. Ms. Donnelly is on the faculty at Vassar College.

She lives in New York with her husband, New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin, and their two daughters.