Women cartoonists

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast is a city person. She grew up in an apartment building in Brooklyn, N.Y., and though she moved to the suburbs as an adult when she was pregnant with her second child, she never stopped loving the grit and excitement of New York City.

In Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast combines text, cartoons, sketches and photos to describe her interactions with her parents during the last years of their lives.

Originally broadcast May 8.

On her Hyperbole and a Half blog, Allie Brosh writes stories about her life illustrated with a "very precise crudeness." Most are lighthearted — about her dog or her favorite grammatical mistake ("a lot" vs. "alot) — but her most popular posts have also been the most upsetting, about her crippling depression.

Roz Chast's quirky pen-and-ink drawings have appeared in The New Yorker since 1978. She has published over 600 cartoons in the magazine. Her most recent book is The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995-2003. This interview was first broadcast Dec. 18, 1987.

Comic book artist Diane Noomin. She's the editor of (and a contributor to) a new collection of underground comics drawn by women. It's called "Twisted Sisters." It's published by Penguin.

Cartoonist and writer Lynda Barry. Barry's comic strip about her childhood, "Ernie Pook's Comeek," is popular in many alternative newsweeklies around the country. She's also written a show based on the comic, called "The Good Times Are Killing Me." It's playing now Off-Broadway. (This interview was recorded this summer before a live audience in Seattle, when Terry visited station KPLU).

Wilkinson says she is one of three women cartoonists on the national scene. She works for the Philadelphia Daily News and contributes to Ms. Magazines. Wilkinson joins Fresh Air to discuss the efficacy of her work, and the legal and editorial risks involved with her trade.

Cartoonist Roz Chast, whose quirky pen-and-ink drawings appear in The New Yorker. She avoids the dry board-room humor typical of The New Yorker, preferring to draw dinosaurs, appliances with skirts, and cheese.

Mimi Pond is the author and illustrator of the new book "The Valley Girls' Guide to Life," which she researched by spending time in the mall with Californian junior high students. Pond is a cartoonist whose strip "Mimi Pond's Famous Waitress School" appears regularly in The National Lampoon.