Garry Trudeau
Garry Trudeau was born in New York City in 1948 and was raised in Saranac Lake, N.Y. He attended Yale University, where he received his B.A. and an M.F.A. in graphic design.
Doonesbury was launched in 1970 and now appears in nearly 1,500 newspapers in the United States and abroad. It is distributed to newspapers by Universal Press Syndicate. His work has been collected in nearly 60 hardcover, trade paperback and mass-market editions, which have cumulatively sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. In 1975, Trudeau became the first comic strip artist ever to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Since then, he's been a finalist three times, including this year for his strips concerning the war in Iraq.
Trudeau's latest book, The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time, was published in June 2005, with Sen. John McCain writing the foreward. The book is a collection of the "wounded warrior" strips, which chronicle the injury and recovery of B.D., a longtime Doonesbury character who lost a leg while serving in Iraq in April, 2004. The book was published at the request of Fisher House, a nonprofit organization that provides a "home away from home" to the families of military personnel who are being treated in military and VA medical centers. The advance and royalties from The Long Road Home go to Fisher House.
Trudeau's experience with film and theater is significant. Working with John and Faith Hubley, Trudeau wrote and co-directed the animated film, A Doonesbury Special, for NBC-TV 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 again collaborated with Swados in 1984, this time on Rap Master Ronnie, a satirical revue about the Reagan Administration that opened off-Broadway at the Village Gate. 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, along with director Robert Altman, HBO's critically acclaimed Tanner '88, a satiric look at that year's presidential election campaign. The show won several 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. In 2004, he teamed again with Altman and the original cast to produce the sequel series, Tanner on Tanner, for the Sundance Channel.
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 publications such as 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.
Trudeau lives in New York City with his wife, Jane Pauley, and their three children.
