Lynda Jean Barry is an American cartoonist and author. Barry is best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. She garnered attention with her 1988 illustrated novel The Good Times are Killing Me, about an interracial friendship between two young girls, which was made into a play. Her second illustrated novel Cruddy appeared in 1999. Three years later she published One! Hundred! Demons!, a graphic novel she terms "Autobiofictionalography". What It Is is a graphic novel that is part memoir, part collage and part workbook in which Barry instructs her readers in methods to open up their own creativity; it won the comics industry's 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. 

January 2nd, 1956 in Richland Center (Age 68)