Over 1,000 of Roz Chast’s cartoons have been printed in the New Yorker since 1978, but she isn’t stopping any time soon. Chast is a brilliant interpreter of the everyday: her cartoons depict neuroses, hilarity, angst, and domesticity and are loaded with words, objects, and patterns. The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, has called her “the magazine’s only certifiable genius,” and O magazine said she “has the wryest pen since Dorothy Parker’s.”
According to the New York Times, Chast’s “great gift is her ability to filter normal life through the manic salad spinner that is her mind, to produce work that is both [unique] and universal.” In her newest book, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Chast has composed a relatable, funny, and ultimately touching memoir of her time as her parents’ primary caregiver in their Brooklyn apartment. The book is a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award in nonfiction.
According to the Comic’s Journal, Chast was the “first truly subversive New Yorker cartoonist,” whose work stood out in the older, male-dominated office. She has been honored with the New York City Literary Award for Humor (2012), and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
6:30 p.m. Become an Annual Series Supporter at the $500 level and enjoy an intimate wine and hors d’oeuvres reception with Roz Chast.