Lynda Barry is a 2019 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found that they are very much alike.

Barry is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip that was syndicated across North America in alternative weeklies for two decades, “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. She is the author of “The Freddie Stories,” “One! Hundred! Demons!,” “The! Greatest! of! Marlys!,” “Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel,” “Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!” and “The Good Times are Killing Me,” which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governor’s Award.

She has written four bestselling and acclaimed creative how-to graphic novels for “Drawn & Quarterly”: “What It Is,” which won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author; “Picture This”; “Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor” and “Making Comics.”