Françoise Mouly joined The New Yorker as art editor in 1993. She has been the publisher and editorial director of TOON Books since its launch in 2008. Mouly founded Raw Books & Graphics in 1977 and was publisher for 15 years. Starting in 1980, Mouly was the founder, publisher and designer of the pioneering avant-garde comics anthology RAW, which she co-edited along with her husband, cartoonist Art Spiegelman. RAW first brought acclaim to artists such as Charles Burns, Sue Coe, Gary Panter, Chris Ware, Lorenzo Mattotti, Joost Swarte, Xavier Mariscal, and many others. It is also the magazine where Maus, Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book on the Holocaust, was first published.

In 2008, Mouly launched TOON Books, her own imprint of comics for emerging readers, which have received universal praise and multiple awards for their innovative approach. Benny and Penny in The Big No-No! by Geoffrey Hayes was nominated by the ALA as the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award in 2010 as “the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year.” Two other TOON Books, Stinky by Eleanor Davis and Little Mouse by Jeff Smith were also chosen as Honor books to the Geisel Award.

In 2009, Abrams ComicArts published Mouly’s The TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, where, together with Spiegelman, she compiled an unprecedented collection of the greatest classic comics for children. A starred review in Booklist raved: “If there’s a word with more urgency than essential, then that’s what this comics cornerstone is for libraries.”

Born in Paris, Françoise Mouly studied architecture at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, and moved to New York in 1974. In 2001, Mouly was named chevalier in the order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Go to the Comics Reporter interview with Mouly…

The Center For Cartoon Studies (CCS) is America’s premiere cartooning school and studio, located in the historic village of White River Junction, Vermont. Now offering the Master of Fine Arts, One- and Two-Year Certificates, and summer workshops. Faculty and visiting artists include many of today’s most celebrated cartoonists. CCS has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, LA Times, and The Washington Post. CCS is a driving force behind the recent revitalization of White River Junction, bringing jobs, students, and art to the village. For more information, visit: cartoonstudies.org