About Today's Szep
TODAY’S SZEP is what’s commonly known as a social cartoon, pithy comments on the vagaries of life, not unlike those found in magazines, like The New Yorker. The social cartoon actually goes back to Honore Daumier, a political cartoonist, who after depicting France’s last King Louis-Phillipe in gross and unflattering images, spent six months in jail and was forced to draw social images as lithographs. My own switch from political cartoons to social comments was not that extreme.
Paul Szep was born in darkest Canada, which accounts for the way he talks, eh? He was a hockey player and worked in the steel mills, which partly accounts for the way he thinks. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Arts and Design in Toronto, Ontario. He was the editorial cartoonist for the Boston Globe for almost 40 years
Paul won two Pulitzer Prizes, two Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Awards, a Headliner Award and the International Thomas Nast Award. He has three honorary doctorates and was a fellow at Harvard University.
Paul's daughter, Amy, is a fashion illustrator and lives on Cape Cod with her two children. His son, Jason, who also won the Pulitzer Prize as a writer-editor for Reuters in Washington DC, lives with his wife and two children in Maryland.
Paul and his wife, Sherry, reside in a golf community in Sarasota, Florida where he plays way too much golf but still manages to draw his cartoons and portraits every day.