Robyn Smith (cartoonist)

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Robyn Smith
NationalityJamaican
Notable work Nubia: Real One , Wash Day Diaries
Awards Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics

Robyn Brooke Smith is a Jamaican writer and cartoonist based in the United States. She is the author of The Saddest, Angriest, Black Girl in Town and the illustrator of Wash Day, Nubia: Real One , and Wash Day Diaries , for which she received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics.

Contents

Early life and education

Smith was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She aspired to become a cartoonist from childhood, inspired in part by her father, a portrait artist and her mother, a makeup artist. [1] She also enjoyed reading Archie Digest , which she considers a key influence on her work. [2] [1] Smith's family immigrated to the Bronx when she was 16, after she graduated high school. [1]

Smith received her bachelor's degree from Hampshire College and received her master of fine arts degree from the Center for Cartoon Studies. [3] [4]

Career

During her graduate program at the Center for Cartoon Studies she developed her debut comic book The Saddest Angriest Black Girl In Town (2016) as a mini-thesis project, a memoir about "her experience being one of the only Black people in a rural Vermont town and how that time affected her mental health and her grasp of how Blackness is viewed in the world." [4] The book was named to the 2016 Best Short Form Comics list by The Comics Journal . After going out of print, it was reprinted in 2021 by Black Josei Press. [4] Smith also published comics on CollegeHumor. [1]

Jamila Rowser approached Smith to illustrate Wash Day, a comic about a hair care ritual for Black women, published in 2018 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. [5] [1] It won a 2019 DiNKy Award for Best Floppy Comic. [3] She also illustrated the follow-up graphic novel Wash Day Diaries , for which she and writer Jamila Rowser received the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics. [6] [7]

Smith illustrated Nubia: Real One (2021), a DC comic written by L.L. McKinney.

Works

Illustration

Accolades

References

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