[Liza Donnelly’s] latest book, Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists, publishes in March. In it, Donnelly continues telling the history of some of the women artists published in the nearly 100-year-old magazine starting from 2005, where her earlier book, Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists And Their Cartoons, left off.
North Country Public Radio interviews cartoonist/ historian Lisa Donnelly.
On her books about women cartoonists
In 1999, I began to think more seriously about why there weren’t more women in The New Yorker. I was one of four women when I started. It increased a little bit in the ’80s and ’90s…but I started thinking, ‘Why aren’t there more women doing this? What’s wrong?’ And also I think what prompted it was that I was invited to be on a panel of cartoonists who are women for the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists. I was not a member, but they needed women to be on the panel. So they asked me to join the panel and I was sitting up there… on this panel with maybe five women, I don’t remember. And I… looked out at the room. It was a packed room of cartoonists and it was visually jarring because they were all men. It’s a roomful of men looking at us, five women on the panel. So that’s what got me thinking more seriously about why there aren’t more women. And I started researching and came up with the idea for my book, Funny Ladies.
Liza’s pair of books on The New Yorker’s women cartoonists
should be side by side on the shelves of all cartooning fans.
