Maine Lit Fest Keynote Speaker Lynda Barry

In collaboration with Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and the Center for the Arts and Humanities’ 2023–2025 “Play” theme, Colby College will be sponsoring the two-day Maine Lit Fest focusing on creativity, graphic writing, and social justice and featuring MacArthur Fellow and the 2024–2025 Kristina Stahl Writer-in-Residence Lynda Barry.

Lynda Barry is an award winning author and artist. She has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. The New York Times has described Barry as “among this country’s greatest conjoiners of words and images, known for plumbing all kinds of touchy subjects in cartoons, comic strips and novels, both graphic and illustrated.” She earned a degree from Evergreen State College during its early experimental period (1974–78), studying with painter and writing teacher Marilyn Frasca. Frasca’s questions about the nature of images and the role they play in day-to-day living have guided Barry’s work ever since.

Barry has authored 21 books, worked as a commentator for NPR, and had a regular monthly feature in Esquire, Mother Jones Magazine, Mademoiselle, and Salon. She created an album-length spoken word collection of stories called The Lynda Barry Experience, and was a frequent guest on the Late Show with David Letterman. Barry has received numerous awards and honors for her work, including an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Philadelphia University of Art in 2015. Barry was also inducted into the Cartoonist’s Hall of Fame in 2016 and honored as a MacArthur Fellow (also known as the Genius Grant) in 2019.

Lynda Barry will deliver a 50 min. talk related to the importance of creativity, followed by audience questions for 20-30 mins. There will be a table for book selling and Barry will participate in a book signing.