Bio:

Stephanie McMillan decided at age ten that she would become a cartoonist, and spent much of grade school reading Peanuts and copying the characters. She later revised her goal to animation, and created her first short animated film during the summer after high school at the film studio near Bonn, Germany that had been founded by her grandfather, animator Hans Fischerkoesen ("Das Loch im Westen," "Der Schneeman," "Die Vervitterte Melodie," and "Das Dumme Ganslein").

High school also brought the beginnings of a political awakening, and she wrote her first article for the high school paper about the dangers of nuclear war. She went on to work for many years on issues such as reproductive freedom, immigrant rights, police brutality and anti-imperialism.

Stephanie graduated from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1987 with a BFA in film, studying animation under Richard Protovin and John Canemaker. During this time she worked painting cels for an animated motivational film for Huggies, and as an intern for stop-motion animator Jane Aaron. She received an award for her student film.

Turning toward political activism as her main focus, she worked in a series of retail, light industrial and low-skilled office jobs for the next few years. In 1992 she was hired by a weekly magazine as an editorial assistant and offered her first professional cartooning opportunity. In 1999 she began self-syndicating political cartoons for other publications. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications including Monday Magazine (Canada), Comic Relief, Impact Press, Clamor, Comic News, The Funny Times, Megh Barta (Bangladesh), San Francisco Bay Guardian, Casseurs de Pub (France), Boston's Weekly Dig, Anchorage Press, and The Word (Canada).

A collection of her cartoons, "Attitude Presents Minimum Security" was published in 2005. Her work is also included in "Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists" (2002), as well as in various textbooks and several books in the Opposing Viewpoints series by Gale Publishing Group.

She is a founding member of Cartoonists With Attitude, a group of ground-breaking social commentary and political cartoonists formed in 2006, many of whom appear in N.B.M. Publishing's "Attitude" series of books edited by Ted Rall.

Her cartoons have been included in exhibits at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (New York), the San Francisco Comic Art Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC), among other venues.

Minimum Security is syndicated by United Media and appears five times per week at comics.com.

Coming November 2007: "As the World Burns," a graphic novel with writer Derrick Jensen, 225 pages, Seven Stories Press.

Awards:

  • First Place, Excellence in Postal Union Journalism, APWU National Postal Press Association, 2003 and 2005
  • Honorable Mention, Creative Resistance Contest, Adbusters, 2000
  • First Place, General Excellence in Editorial Cartooning, Florida Press Club, 1997 and 1994
  • Second Place, General Excellence in Artist Illustration, Florida Press Club, 1996

Here are a few book reviews and interviews I wrote, 2000-2001.


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