Françoise Mouly, from Indie Comics to The New Yorker

Françoise Mouly has been the art editor of The New Yorker since 1993, where she has overseen more than a fifteen hundred covers. Many of these have been named cover of the year by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). In 1978, she co-founded with Art Spiegelman, her husband and frequent collaborator, the groundbreaking comics anthology RAW; coediting the New York Times-bestselling Little Lit series; and the TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics.

Mouly is the publisher, designer, and editorial director of TOON books, which she launched in 2008. TOON Books is an imprint of comics for early readers and has garnered numerous awards including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award given to “the most distinguished” book for beginning readers. In the Fall of 2014, Mouly launched TOON Graphics, a line of comics for ages eight and up. In 2017 she collaborated with Nadja Spiegelman to publish Resist! a collection of comics and graphics primarily by women.

In 2012, Mouly released Blown Covers, about the creative process behind The New Yorker covers, and Postcards from The New Yorker: A Hundred Postcards from Ten Decades. Jeet Heer’s In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013), was the first biography Mouly has appeared in. Mouly has curated exhibits internationally and lectured extensively on the art of The New Yorker covers. In 2001, she was named Chevalier in the order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and in 2011, she was awarded France’s highest honor, the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur. She has received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute and multiple awards including the Richard Gangel Art Director Award from the Society of Illustrators. In September 2014, she was awarded the Eric Carle Museum Bridge Award for “sustained achievement in the realm of the illustrated books for young people.” In November 2015, Mouly received the Smithsonian magazine’s Ingenuity Award for her work in education, calling her a “transformative figure in comics.” In 2021, Mouly was inducted in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.

Barry Blitt is a cartoonist and illustrator. Since 1992, he has contributed illustrations and more than a hundred covers to The New Yorker. In 2020, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, for work that included several covers for the magazine, in addition to an array of cartoons that appeared in its pages and on its Web site. Blitt’s work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Time, Rolling Stone, and The Atlantic, and he illustrated Frank Rich’s weekly column in the New York Times. He has been honored with exhibitions and awards from the Society of Illustrators, Print, and American Illustration, and is a member of the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. His work for children includes George Washington’s Birthday and Once Upon a Time, the End (Asleep in 60 Seconds). “Blitt” is a compilation of his illustrations for The New Yorker, the Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications.

Canadian by birth, Anita Kunz has lived in London, New York and Toronto, and has been widely published in countries including Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Canada, South Africa, Holland, Portugal, France and England. Her socially and politically themed work has been printed in major publications such as Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times, Newsweek, Random House Publishing and many others. Anita frequently teaches workshops and lectures at universities and institutions internationally including the Smithsonian and the Corcoran School of Arts & Design in Washington, D.C. She has lectured and taught in such far-flung places as India and Istanbul. Her summer workshops have been conducted at various schools including the Master of Arts degree program at Syracuse University. Her works are in the permanent collections at the Library of Congress, the Canadian Archives in Ottawa, the McCord Museum in Montreal, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, and two of her Time Magazine cover paintings are in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Her most recent museum acquisition is at the Museum of the Avant-garde in Switzerland.

Peter de Sève’s work spans four decades and various media, including magazines, books, television commercials, Broadway posters, and character designs. He’s best recognized for his The New Yorker Magazine covers and his character designs for the Ice Age franchise. De Sève has also contributed to such films as Finding Nemo, Robots, The Little Prince and The Grinch, to name a few. His many distinctions include the prestigious Hamilton King Award from the Society of Illustrators, an Emmy Award for best character design in a television show, and an Annie Award. His book, The Art of Peter de Sève was released in Fall 2023.

Nadja Spiegelman is the author of the memoir I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This, as well as four children’s books, including the award-winning Lost in NYC. She was the editor-in-chief of Astra Magazine and is the special features editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books as well as a contributing editor at The Paris Review. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, Newyorker.com, The Cut, and more.