Steve Kelley is a syndicated political cartoonist. Born in Virginia, he was an honors graduate of Dartmouth College in 1981, where he drew cartoons for both the Daily Dartmouth and The Dartmouth Review. He began his professional career at the San Diego Union Tribune, and moved to the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2002[1] after an incident that began when Kelley submitted a cartoon to his editors in which the scene depicted two teenagers wearing baggy low-cut pants that did not completely cover their buttocks.[2]
Kelley and Florida Today editorial cartoonist Jeff Parker, who also worked on Mother Goose and Grimm and Blondie in the past, also produce the comic strip Dustin, which debuted in early 2010.
He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the editorial cartooning category in 1999.[3] His cartoons have also won the National Headliner Award, the Best of The West competition, the Los Angeles Press Club award, and six first place California Newspaper Publishers Association awards.[4] He won the 2007 The Scripps Howard Foundation's National Journalism Awards for Editorial Cartooning. He served as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College.