Lisa Hanawalt
Lisa Hanawalt
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Lisa Hanawalt

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Lisa Hanawalt

Lisa Hanawalt (born June 1983) is an American illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. She has published comic series, as well as three books of illustrations. She worked as the production designer and a producer of the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman (2014–2020), and co-hosted the podcast Baby Geniuses (2012–2024) with comedian Emily Heller. She created and executive produced the Netflix/Adult Swim animated series Tuca & Bertie (2019–2022).

Hanawalt was born in Palo Alto, California, to Stanford biologists Philip Hanawalt and Graciela Spivak. Her mother was born and raised in Argentina by a family of Jewish refugees originally from Odesa.

Hanawalt was educated at Henry M. Gunn High School. She attended UCLA, graduating with a B.A. in art in 2006.

She is a former member of Pizza Island, a cartoonist's studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which included cartoonists Kate Beaton, Domitille Collardey, Sarah Glidden, Meredith Gran, and Julia Wertz.

Her illustrations and writings have been published in print and online periodicals including The New York Times, McSweeney's, Vanity Fair, and Lucky Peach magazine. From 2011 through 2013, she was a regular contributor to The Hairpin and produced a series of illustrated film reviews.

Her first comic series, I Want You, was published in 2009 by Buenaventura Press. In 2010, Hanawalt was the first woman to win an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic, for "I Want You #1." In 2012, she illustrated her first children's book, Benny's Brigade, published by McSweeney's and authored by Arthur Bradford. The book stars a tiny talking walrus, rescued by two sisters with a range of magical animals at the end of the quest. The book was named a "Wildest Book of the Year" by children's lit blog 100 Scope Notes and called "exuberant and imaginative" by Foreword Reviews. The book's jacket reverse folds out into an oversized poster featuring Hanawalt's creatures from the book.

In 2013, Drawn & Quarterly published My Dirty Dumb Eyes, Hanawalt's "one-woman anthology" of comics and illustrations, including previously-commissioned works. The collected stories and shorts range from autobiographical narratives to cultural observations, frequently featuring anthropomorphic animal-people and scenes of nature rendered in bright, detailed watercolors, and likened by one reviewer to "a grown-up Richard Scarry turned absurdist social commentator."

In 2016, Drawn & Quarterly published Hot Dog Taste Test. This book is a collection of comics and illustrations often featuring animal-people in vibrant watercolors. Publishers Weekly said about her book, "Hanawalt takes a kebab skewer to the pomposity that's grown up around food and dining. The cartoons evoke an idiosyncratic absurdity akin to Roz Chast's work."

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