Fil-Am graphic novelist Lynda Barry wins MacArthur ‘genius’ grant

Graphic novelist and educator Lynda Barry is a MacArthur “genius.” FACEBOOK

CHICAGO – Fil-Am graphic novelist and educator Lynda Barry is among 26 artists and scholars being given The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards, better known as the “genius” grants for creativity and potential.

In naming Barry one of its 2019 fellows, the MacArthur Foundation praised Barry for “inspiring creative engagement through original graphic works and a teaching practice centered on the role of image making in communication.”

Along with inclusion on an illustrious list of past fellows — more than 1,000 in all, since the program’s first class in 1981 — each of this year’s grantees gets a $625,000 stipend, given out in quarterly installments over five years with no strings attached.

Fil-Am Lynda Barry is well known for her decades-long career as a cartoonist and graphic novelist. “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” her weekly comic strip in alternative newspapers, and graphic novels such as The Good Times Are Killing Me (1988) and One! Hundred! Demons! (2002), frequently referenced her growing up years in a Filipino American household as she demonstrated an uncanny capacity to depict the intense emotions of adolescence.

One of Barry’s works. AMAZON

The foundation cited this example of her creativity as an educator: “Her Drawbridge program pairs graduate students with four-year-old children in exploration of a topic (such as the difference between the mind and brain), giving graduate students new insight into their research problems as they are forced to use a visual approach, rather than words, to explain them.”

Lynda Barry graduated from Evergreen State College and has been affiliated with the University of Wisconsin at Madison since 2012, where she is currently Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity in the Department of Art. Barry’s additional publications include the illustrated novel Cruddy (1999) and the forthcoming Making Comics (November 2019).