Art Spiegelman author page

Art Spiegelman biography

Art Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, editor and writer whose work played a major part in establishing comics as a recognised literary form. He began drawing professionally as a teenager and later became involved in underground comics.

In 1980, Spiegelman co-founded and co-edited RAW, an anthology magazine of comics and graphics created with Françoise Mouly. The magazine published experimental work and introduced many readers to contemporary cartoonists from Europe and North America.

His best-known book is Maus, published in two volumes as Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History in 1986 and Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began in 1991. The work is based on his father’s account of the Holocaust and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Spiegelman was a contributor to The New Yorker from 1992 and produced a series of covers for the magazine. His later books include In the Shadow of No Towers (2004), created in response to the 11 September attacks, and Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!, reissued in an expanded edition in 2008.

In 2022, he received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.