Lynda Barry

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Lynda Barry

Born
Richland Center, Wisconsin
Nationality American
Area(s) artist, writer
Notable works One! Hundred! Demons!, The Greatest of Marlys

Lynda Barry (born January 2, 1956) is an American cartoonist and author. One of the most successful non-mainstream American cartoonists, Barry is perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. Barry's cartoons often view family life from the perspective of pre-teen girls from the wrong side of the tracks – particularly sensitive, freckled Arna and the cousins with whom she lives; pig-tailed Marlys, overly confident, unpopular and mean, and the older Maybonne, who goes out with boys – but she often ventures far afield from this, such as in her strips featuring a poetry-spouting poodle named Fred Milton. She also garnered attention when her book The Good Times are Killing Me was made into a play.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, Barry moved as a child to Washington. She went to the same high school as artist Charles Burns. At The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington she met fellow cartoonist Matt Groening, who first published "Ernie Pook's Comeek" in the school paper without her knowledge.[1] After graduating Evergreen she moved to Seattle, and when she was 23 the Chicago Reader picked up her comic strip, enabling her to make a living from her comics alone.[2] She later moved to Chicago, Illinois. For a time, she dated public radio personality Ira Glass who moved to Chicago in 1989 to be with her. Barry does not remember the relationship fondly. She is quoted in a 1998 Chicago Reader article as saying of Glass, "I went out with him. It was the worst thing I ever did. When we broke up he gave me a watch and said I was boring and shallow, and I wasn't enough in the moment for him, and it was over." Glass confirms, "Anything bad she says about me I can confirm." [3] Barry has written a comic story about the relationship, entitled "Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend", in her book One! Hundred! Demons!.

She currently lives near Footville, Wisconsin. She is one quarter-Filipina[citation needed].

[edit] Work

While Barry's work is humorous, the undertones are usually serious. It depicts life as harsh but occasionally joyful. Her work addresses themes of intolerance and psychic pain, and at times includes some starkly left-wing political work. Her comics do not strive to depict beauty or demonstrate artistic virtuosity – in that sense being similar to her peers Matt Groening (like her, a graduate of The Evergreen State College), Lloyd Dangle, and Mark Alan Stamaty – but for all their grubbiness are extremely expressive and evocative. Barry's early work was rendered with pen and had a distinctly New Wave, '80s look, but she told The Comics Journal that she was forced to give up the pen because it was hurting her wrist, turning to a brush which gave her work a much looser, child-like quality.

[edit] Books

Barry's books include The Good Times are Killing Me (ISBN 1-57061-105-X, also a musical play that appeared off-Broadway), The Greatest of Marlys, The Freddie Stories, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel and One! Hundred! Demons!, a collection of the series published in venues such as Salon.com. Her backlist includes Everything in the World, The Fun House, It's So Magic, Naked Ladies Naked Ladies Naked Ladies, Shake a Tail Feather, Down the Street, Big Ideas, Come Over Come Over, Girls and Boys and My Perfect Life. Barry offers a workshop titled Writing the Unthinkable through the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and The Crossings in Austin, Texas, where she teaches the process she uses to create all of her work and which she learned from her teacher, Marilyn Frasca, at The Evergreen State College. Barry is a big fan of Mary Parker Follett's Creative Experience.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Pamela Grossman. "Barefoot on the Shag", Salon, 18 May 1999. Retrieved on 2008-03-20. 
  2. ^ Joe Garden. "Lynda Barry", A.V.Club, 8 Dec 1999. Retrieved on 2008-03-20. 
  3. ^ Michael Miner. "Ira Glass's Messy Divorce: What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?", Chicago Reader, 20 Nov 1998. Retrieved on 2007-03-15. 

[edit] External links