Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau was born in New York City in 1948, and raised in Saranac Lake, New York. He attended Yale University, where he received his Bachelor's of Arts and an M.F.A. in graphic design. He is an American cartoonist, best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doonesbury comic strip.
Trudeau premiered Doonesbury in 1970, and it now appears in nearly 1400 daily and Sunday newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. His work has been collected in nearly 60 books, which have sold over 7 million copies. In 1975, Trudeau became the first comic strip artist ever to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. In 1989, he was a finalist for a second Pulitzer. Trudeau went on tp write and co-direct the animated film, "A Doonesbury Special", for NBC in 1977. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and received the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Collaborating with composer Elizabeth Swados in 1983, Trudeau wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical, "Doonesbury", for which he was nominated for two Drama Desk Awards. A cast album of the show, recorded for MCA, received a Grammy nomination. Trudeau collaborated again with Swados in 1984, on "Rap Master Ronnie", a satirical revue about the Reagan Administration. Over the next four years the show was continuously updated for numerous productions around the country. A filmed version of Rap Master Ronnie, featuring Jim Morris, the Smothers Brothers, and Carol Kane was broadcast on Cinemax in 1988.
In 1988, Trudeau wrote and co-produced, with director Robert Altman, HBO's critically acclaimed "Tanner '88", a satiric look at that year's presidential election campaign. The show won awards both in the U.S. and abroad, including the gold medal for Best Television Series at the Cannes Television Festival, and Best Imported Program from the British Broadcasting Press Guild. "Tanner '88" also earned an Emmy - as well as four ACE award nominations.
Ben & Jerry's introduced "Doonesberry," a sorbet made with raspberries and blueberries, in 1996 in honor of the cartoon series. Since 1999 Trudeau has also worked with Starbucks to offer "Dbury@Sbucks," a series of limited edition Doonesbury products that raise money for local literacy programs. m In February of 2000 Trudeau, working with Dotcomix, launched Duke2000, a presidential campaign and website featuring a real-time 3-D streaming-animation character. Nearly 30 campaign videos were posted on the site, and Ambassador Duke was interviewed by satellite on "Live on Larry King" and 60 local TV news programs.
Trudeau has received honorary degrees from Yale, Colgate, Williams, Duke and 18 other universities. He has been inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has contributed articles to Harper's, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The New Yorker, New York, and The Washington Post. For five years he was an occasional columnist for the New York Times op-ed page, and is currently a contributing essayist for Time magazine.
(Bowker Author Biography)
