Chris Ware

Chris Ware was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1967. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, he published a regular comic strip in the student newspaper which Art Spiegelman happened upon and subsequently gave the youthful cartoonist four pages in his and Françoise Mouly’s RAW magazine.

Ware moved to Chicago in the early 90s and began publishing in the pages of the Chicago alternative weeklies New City and The Chicago Reader, forming the bulk of material which he’s collected in the semi-regular periodical The ACME Novelty Library ever since. Offering both serialized stories and short experiments in comics form, a collection of the same name was issued in a large-format hardcover by Pantheon Books in 2005. From both this strip and periodical emerged the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan — the Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000) which received an American Book Award in 2000, the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, as well as being included in the Whitney Biennial of American Art in 2002.  In 2009 Jimmy Corrigan was named as one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times of London. His book, Building Stories, was a New York Times and Time Magazine Top 10 Book of the Year for 2012, and was chosen as the single best book of the year by Publishers Weekly. In 2017 he wrote Monograph, which was an immediate bestseller. His book Rusty Brown was one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2019. His newest book is Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three (Drawn & Quarterly, October 21, 2024). A limited-edition slipcase containing volumes 1 - 3 is also available (Drawn & Quarterly, October 28, 2024).

Ware was the guest-editor of the 13th issue of McSweeney’s and Houghton-Mifflin's Best American Comics 2007. He is a contributor to The New Yorker, and was the first cartoonist chosen to inaugurate the New York Times Magazine’s experimental comics section. He also created a limited run, online serial for The Guardian titled The Last Saturday that debuted in the Fall of 2014.

Chris Ware’s work has appeared in many national and international art exhibits, including solo exhibitions at the Gavle Kunstcentrum in Sweden, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and as part of the Masters of American Comics traveling exhibit. A new exhibition of his work titled Chris Ware: Drawing is Thinking is at the Centre de Cultura Cotemporània de Barcelona from 3 April to 9 November 2025. He is the recipient of several awards including the Ignatz Award, Harvey Award, Eisner Award, National Cartoonists Society Award, and the Grand Prix de la Ville d’Angoulême for lifetime achievement. His work is represented by the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York and the Galerie Martel in Paris. Ware lives in Oak Park, Illinois with his wife, Marnie, a high school science teacher, and their daughter, Clara.