Baha Boukhari, Palestine

Born in Jerusalem in 1944, Baha Boukhari currently works in Ramallah, in the West Bank for the Palestinian daily, Al-Ayyam. He once said that it "was a strange coincident to have his very first picture as an infant in caricature drawn by a friend of his father’s instead of as a photograph.” Boukhari started his career as a political cartoonist in Kuwait in 1964 where he published his cartoons until 1988 in two Kuwaiti newspapers Al Rai Al A'am and Al Anba'a.

Boukhari also lived in Syria and Tunisia for several years before his return to Palestine in 1994. Since then, he has created cartoons that focus on the issues surrounding his homeland. Boukhari’s characters embody the ordinary Palestinian and, although his cartoons address complex issues for many Palestinians, he hopes that his sense of humor and sarcasm causes people to smile. In addition to Boukhari's political cartoons, he has illustrated several children’s books and magazines and has created a number of drawings that deal with human and women’s rights issues.Boukhari is a member of a number of associations including the General University of Palestinian Writers & Journalists, Federation of Arab Journalists, General Union of Palestinian Artists and the Arab Cartoonists Association.

www.baha-cartoon.net

Jeff Danziger, United States

An independent cartoonist for nearly 25 years, New Yorker Jeff Danziger’s work has appeared in hundreds of newspapers around the world from the New York Times, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal to the Toronto Globe, Mail, LeMonde, and China Daily. His work has also appeared in magazines ranging from Newsweek and Forbes to The New Yorker and the Texas Observer.

A decorated Vietnam War veteran, Danziger started his career at a local Vermont newspaper in 1971 earning a dollar per cartoon. He currently draws from six to 10 cartoons a week on a wide variety of topical, and often controversial subjects, most frequently focused on election fraud, political figures, or international affairs. In 2006, Danziger received the Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning and in 1993 he was awarded the Overseas Press Award.

www.danzigercartoons.com




Ali Dilem, Algeria

Born in El-Harrach, Algeria, Ali Dilem is an Algerian cartoonist who publishes his cartoons in the French-language Algerian daily newspaper Liberté. His cartoons also appear on the program “Kiosque” on French TV5.

Dilem began his career in 1990 with the weekly publication Alger Républicain and later in the daily newspaper Le Matin before joining Liberté in 1996. Dilem worked in tough conditions, sometimes facing death threats by Islamist groups during numerous resurgences in addition to harassment by several libel lawsuits. He also received several fines and has been condemned to several years in prison, in the form of both probation and actual jail time, which to this day have not been carried out. In 2004, following the publication of a particular cartoon, a fatwa backed by the Algerian Minister of Religious Affairs was delivered against Dilem in all Algerian mosques. In 2005, Dilem was condemned to six months in prison for a cartoon denouncing the corruption of Algerian generals directly after the fatal floods of Bab El-Oued. In the drawing, two characters commented on generals giving money as “restitution.”

Dilem has received a number of awards, including the International Prize of Drawing in Written Press, the Freedom of Press Trophy as determined by the Limousine Press Club and Reporters without Borders, and the Cartoonists Rights Network’s Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning. In September 2007, Dilem received the Grand Prize of Humour Vache at the Saint-Just-le-Martel International Press and Humour Drawing. Dilem has also participated in “Cartooning for Peace” events in Geneva, Paris, and Brussels.




Liza Donnelly, United States

Liza Donnelly is a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. Her cartoons have appeared regularly in the magazine since 1982, at which time she was the youngest and one of only three women cartoonists at the magazine.

The topics of her cartoons are subject to a broad examination of life, from the most banal aspects of relationships, to politics, child-rearing and city-life neurosis. Her work has appeared in many other national publications, including the New York Times, The Nation, Audubon, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, National Lampoon, American Photographer, and Scholastic News. Donnelly conceived of and edited three collections of cartoons for Ballantine Books called Mothers and Daughters, Fathers and Sons and Husbands and Wives (the last two in partnership with her husband cartoonist Michael Maslin). She has illustrated numerous books and has written and illustrated a children’s series of seven dinosaur books for Scholastic, Inc., which together sold over two million copies. Donnelly also wrote Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, a book about the history of the women cartoonists of The New Yorker. Her next book, titled Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love in 200 Cartoons is a collection of cartoons and writing by Donnelly and nine other top cartoonists in the field. It is due out April 2008, with Twelve Books.

Donnelly has been a member of the Authors Guild since 1984, and was a founding member of the Cartoonists’ Association. A teacher at Vassar College, Donnelly lives in New York with her husband and their two daughters.

www.lizadonnelly.com

Gado, Kenya

Godfrey Mwampembwa “Gado” is a freelance cartoonist living in Nairobi, Kenya. The most syndicated editorial cartoonist in East and Central Africa, Gado’s work explores a wide range of topics from terrorism and deforestation to HIV/AIDS and corruption.

A regular contributor to the Daily Nation (Kenya), New African (U.K.), Courier International (France), Business Day (South Africa) and Sunday Tribune (South Africa), his work has also been published in Le Monde, Washington Times, Des Standard, and Japan Times. Born in 1969 in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, Gado joined the Ardhi Institute to study architecture in 1991, but left one year later to become the editorial cartoonist and illustrator of Nation Media Group, the largest media house in East and Central Africa. Before joining Nation, Gado freelanced with the Tanzanian publications Daily News, Business Times, and The Express. Gado has also published two books: Abunuwasi, a short story comic book and Democrazy! a collection of his editorial cartoons.

During his time at Fabrica, a communication research center in Treviso, Italy, Gado created an animated video on racism and in 2000 joined the Vancouver Film School in Canada, where he studied classical animation and filmmaking. In 1996 he was honored by the International Olympic Media Award in Print Media and in 1999 was named Kenya Cartoonist of the Year. A painter in oil and watercolors, his work has been exhibited in Tanzania, Kenya, France, Norway, Finland, and Italy.

Gado is a member of Kenya Union of Journalists, the Association of East African Cartoonists, Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate, and a Board Member of Cartoonist Rights Network.

www.gadonet.com




Michel Kichka, Israel

A native Belgian and the son of Holocaust survivors, Michel Kichka moved to Israel in 1974 and has since been a freelance illustrator of editorial and political cartoons, comic strips, children’s books, and advertising. Political in nature, Kichka’s work focuses primarily on current events surrounding the Middle East.

Kichka currently serves as a senior lecturer of illustration and comic art at the Bezalel Academy’s Visual Communications Department in Jerusalem. Kichka has also worked for Israel’s Channel Two television network. In November 2005, he organized a meeting of international illustrators at the Mishkenot Shaananim Cultural Center in Jerusalem. He frequently takes part in the exhibitions organized in conjunction with the meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, New York, and Amman, Jordan.

Kichka has staged solo exhibitions in Israel and overseas and participated in numerous group exhibitions and cartoon festivals all over the world.

www.israelcentersf.org/culture/profiles/michelkichka.shtml

Mike Luckovich, United States

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich is the most nationally reprinted cartoonist in the United States. An editorial cartoonist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1989, in 2006 he became the first cartoonist to receive two of the most prestigious awards in the same year: the Reuben, the National Cartoonist Society’s top award for cartoonist of the year, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Published this year with an introduction by former President Jimmy Carter, Luckovich’s book, Four More Years!, features a compilation of cartoons and memoirs that in addition to the current President Bush, “cast a wicked net over Bill Clinton, Donald Rumsfeld, Pat Robertson, the Catholic church, and even the Boy Scouts.”

Born in Seattle, Luckovich graduated from the University of Washington in 1982, sold life insurance door-to-door for two years, and got his first editorial cartoonist job in South Carolina with the Greenville News in 1984. He left Greenville nine months later for a job with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, then joined the Journal-Constitution in 1989. Luckovich was awarded his first Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

Syndicated in over 150 newspapers, Luckovich’s work appears regularly in Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Piyale Madra, Turkey

Piyale Madra is a Turkish cartoonist whose work has appeared in exhibitions, newspapers, and on television throughout the world.

Madra exhibited her work most recently in 2006 in Nancy, France, and again in a joint exhibition with French cartoonists Plantu in Paris. She has also had solo exhibitions in Turkey, France, Italy, Berlin, and Belgium, and has participated in a number of other group shows. These exhibitions include the Women Caricaturists Biennial in Italy in 1995, 1996, and 1997, and the Turkish Women Karikaturist Exhibition in Paris and Berlin in 1998. Madra was first recognized in 1982 for her “Picnic” strips, which appeared in the Milliyet and Cumhuriyet newspapers in Turkey. In 1992, these strips were compiled into a Turkish and English book. Her “Women and Women” strip ran in Cosmopolitan Turkey from 1987-1993. Madra then began the “Adams and Eves” strip in 1994 with the newspaper Yeni Yüzy?l. In 1998, the strips continued in the Turkish newspaper Radikal and were later aired as cartoons on Turkish Television, TRT, and NTV. Selections of her cartoon series have been featured in five comic books over the years.

Madra graduated in 1977 from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, Turkey, with a degree in applied industrial arts and graphics. She also attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Grenoble, France, and studied graphics and billboard design in Stockholm, Sweden.

Plantu, France

Plantu is a French editorial cartoonist whose work is best known for its frequent appearance in Le Monde.

In 1971, he quit medical school in order to study drawing at the Ecole de Saint-Luc in Bruxelles, popularized by Hergé. A year later, Le Monde published his first drawing dealing with the Vietnam War. This marked the beginning of his career at Le Monde, where his editorial cartoons have graced the front page since 1985, in an effort to “acknowledge the French tradition of political cartoons.”

In 1991, during an exhibition in Tunis, Plantu met the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who drew the Star of David on the Israeli flag for one of Plantu’s drawings. The illustration won an award called “Prix du document” at the Festival du scoop in Angers, France. A year later, Arafat and Shimon Pérès autographed one of Plantu’s drafts before they decided to ratify the Oslo Accords.

In 1998, the French postal service distributed a 3 franc stamp designed by Plantu, to raise money for the international humanitarian organization, Médecins Sans Frontières. That same year, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNESCO published several dozen brochures illustrated by Plantu.

Born in Paris in 1951, His drawings have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Ukrainian, and Georgian, as well as many other languages.

www.plantu.net



Ann Telnaes, United States

Ann Telnaes is a freelance cartoonist whose work is nationally and internationally syndicated by Cartoonists & Writers/NY Times Syndicate. Her work has appeared in the London Guardian, Le Monde, the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and other highly-regarded newspapers. Her animated editorial cartoons have also appeared on Guardian Unlimited, the London Guardian's website. In 2001 Telnaes became the second woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and in 2003 she received the National Press Foundation's Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons.

Telnaes' work was shown in 2004 at a solo exhibition at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. In that same year, her first book, Humor's Edge, was published by Pomegranate Press and the Library of Congress. Her work has also been exhibited in Paris and Jerusalem. Before beginning her career as an editorial cartoonist, Telnaes worked for Walt Disney Imagineering and Warner Bros as a designer. She has been an animator and layout designer for various animation studios in London, Los Angeles, Taiwan, and New York.

Born in Stockholm in 1960, Telnaes is a naturalized U.S. citizen. She is a former board member of the Cartoonists Rights Network and the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. She is a past vice president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and a current member of the American Newswomen¹s Club and International Women's Forum/Washington, DC. Telnaes lives and works in Washington D.C.

www.anntelnaes.com

No-rio Yamanoi, Japan

Chairman of the Japanese branch of the Federation of Cartoonist Association (FECO), No-rio Yamanoi lives in Aomori, 700k north of Tokyo.

His Japanese name, Norio, translates as “Educated Hero” in Chinese, although the cartoonist uses the pronounciation and pen name NO-RIO in his cartoons. He discovered that with this pronounciation, his name also means “I don’t laugh” in Spanish.

In 1991 he won the Bunshun Manga Sho, the most prestigious cartoon award in Japan. Born in Tokyo in 1947, he left Japan in 1977 for Paris, where he made movies including one for UNESCO’s Arm Reduction Campaign. Since 2003 he has been a member of the Davos conference, hosted by an international coalition of NGOs which runs parallel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.