The Kerri Edelman Show Presents Illustrator & Author David DeGrand

David Degrand is the illustrator of the kids graphic novel Snot Goblins & Other Tasteless Tales and of the gross tongue-twister book Twisted Tongues. He has also written and illustrated for Garfield, SpongeBob Comics, Simpsons Comics and MAD magazine. In 2024, he created designs for the ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic video ‘Polkamania.’ He recently released his new graphic novel, ‘I AM NOT OKAY’ published by Union Square Kids. For more information, visit degrandland.ccom

James Yang is an award-winning illustrator who has won over 250 awards for design and illustration. His work has appeared in prestigious trade publications, such as Communications Arts, 3x3 Magazine, Graphis, Print and The Art Directors Club of New York. His illustrations and designs have also appeared in Business Week, ESPN, Golf Digest, Forbes, Fortune, Nabisco, Sony Records, New York Times, Wired and Smithsonian Institution. He has released numerous books including ‘Bus! Stop!’ (selected as an outstanding picture book by The New York Times), followed by his book ‘Stop! Bot!’ (earning the 2020 Geisel Award) and his book ‘A Boy Named Isamu: A Stoy of Isamu Noguchi’ (selected as the 2022 Asian Pacific American Library Association Honor picture book for Asian American Literature). He recently released his new book, 'A Universe Big & Small: A Story About Carl Sagan' (Viking Books/Penguin Random House). For more information, go to jamesyang.com and follow him @yangblog

Rob Kutner has won 5 Emmys, a Peabody, a TCA, and a Grammy writing for such shows as TBS’ “CONAN” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’ He co-created the fact-based comedy TV show “Gander.” Rob’s other TV writing includes “Teen Titans Go!” “Ben10” “Angry Birds: Summer Madness” and HBO’s “Dennis Miller Live.” He has also written material for the Oscars, Emmys, Writers’ Guild Awards, MTV Movie Awards, Guys’ Choice Awards, and two White House Correspondents’ Dinners. He has developed kids’ and adult animated series for Warner Brothers and SyFy. Rob is the author of the satirical end-of-times bestseller Apocalypse How: Turn the End of Times into the Best of Times, the Amazon Kindle e-bestseller/Audible audiobook The Future According to Me, the graphic novel Shrinkage, horror comedy kids’ anthology Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales and the NY Times bestselling ‘in-universe’ Memoir of Scott ‘Ant-Man’ Lang. His latest project that he is the Head Writer for it titled God’s Gang, which is an interfaith kids’ action-comedy animated series. For more information, visit robkutner.com and follow @robkutner

Phil Witte is a cartoonist and author. His cartoons have been published in dozens of publications in the U.S. and U.K., including The Wall Street Journal, The Times (of London) and Reader’s Digest, to name a few. His humor writing has appeared in American Bystander, Slackjaw, and many other print and digital publications. He has written 2 prior books including a joke book titled “What You Don’t Know About Turning 50” and a sequel on turning 60. Rex Hesner is a jazz musician, writer, and cartoon critic. He established Cartoon Companion, arguably the world’s first website dedicated to reviewing and rating single-panel cartoons. He and collaborator Phil Witte wrote weekly postings over a two-year period before attracting the attention of New Yorker cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff. Migrating to Mankoff’s online cartoon treasure trove, CartoonStock, provided Rex and Phil with countless cartoons to feed their blog, Anatomy of a Cartoon. Pick up a copy of their amazing book 'Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons' on Amazon and where books are sold. For more information, visit www.philipwitte.com and following @philwittecartoons

David Weill is the former Director of the Center for Advanced Lung Disease and Lung and Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical Center. He is currently the Principal of the Weill Consulting Group which focuses on improving the delivery of pulmonary, ICU, and transplant care. David’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, The Hill, and the Los Angeles Times. He also has appeared on Fox, CNN, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal. David’s memoir Exhale: Hope, Healing, and A Life in Transplant was published in May of 2021. All That Really Matters is his debut novel. David divides his time between New Orleans and Alys Beach, FL, with his wife, Jackie, two daughters, Hannah and Ava, and their dogs, Lucy and Frannie.  For more information, visit www.davidweillmd.com and @davidweill1

I’m an illustrator, cartoonist, writer, and snowman expert. I’ve done cartoons for places like the New York Times, MAD magazine and The New Yorker. I wrote The History of the Snowman (Simon & Schuster, 2007) and Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores  (Penguin Random House, 2016) which became a NY Times bestseller. My work has been exhibited in: The Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco, Smithsonian Institute, The Cartoon Museum of London and in 2018, The Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University. I’ve been nominated Gag Cartoonist of the Year (twice) by the National Cartoonists Society. I have spoke in over a 200 TV and radio shows like Good Morning America and places like NYPL, Miami Book Fair, The Norman Rockwell Museum, and The Grolier Club. I have written columns, Op-Eds and features for: New Yorker, New York Times, New York Daily News, NY Newsday, Reader’s Digest, SPY, Playboy, Details, GQ, MAXIM, National Lampoon, Village Voice, and McSweeney’s. I am a Contributing Editor at Writer’s Digest. In 2018, The Illustrated History of the Snowmanby Globe Pequot was published along with a postcard set called World's Greatest Bookstores: 100 Postcards by Clarkson Potter of Penguin Random House. I have been speaking publicly against online shopping to raise awareness for independent bookstores. I taught at NYU, Pratt Institute and School of Visual Arts for a dozen years. In 2022 I published The Complete Book of Cat Names (That Your Cat Won't Answer to, Anyways). I am host of The Cartoon Pad and create the popular Substack newsletter, The Bob. His new book is Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums: Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums.

David Sipress graduated from Williams College and went on to a master’s program in Russian History at Harvard before leaving to pursue a career as a cartoonist. His first cartoon appeared in The New Yorker in 1998. Since then, he has published over seven hundred cartoons in the magazine. During the presidential election in 2012, he became the first Daily Cartoonist on the New Yorker website, and his topical cartoons have continued to appear on newyorker.com ever since. His cartoons have been published in the Boston Phoenix, Time, Parade, Playboy, Funny Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, and numerous other publications. He has published eight collections of his cartoons. He was the 2016 winner of the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Gag Cartooning. He has lectured widely about the art of cartooning, including at Williams College, the Yale Art Museum, and even on the Queen Mary II as the “Cartoonist at Sea”. David’s personal history essays have appeared often on newyorker.com; they range from an appreciation of the great Italian chef, Marcella Hazan, to the story of David’s family’s experience of the Kennedy assassination. David has been widely interviewed about his cartoons and his writing, including on ‘Sixty Minutes’ and ‘Fresh Air with Terry Gross.’ His memoir, WHAT’S SO FUNNY?, was published in 2022. The New York Times called it, “An endearingly vulnerable tale of being molded by one’s family of origin, then crawling out from under its suffocating weight.” A lifetime New Yorker, David lives in Brooklyn with his wife Ginny Shubert, an attorney and activist who works on issues of housing and health.

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's writing takes readers behind the scense of major moment in pop culture history and examines the lasting impact that our favorite TV shows, music, and movies have on our society and psyches. She investigates why pop culture matters deeply, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld, to Sex and the City and Mean Girls, to Beyonce, Taylor, and Barbie. She had written eight books, including the New York Times bestseller Seinfeldia, When Women Invented Television, Sex and The City and Us, and So Fetch. Jennifer began her career in newspapers and spent ten years on stafff at Entertainment Weekly, where she reported from the front lines of Grey's Anatomy, 30 Rock and Lost. Her writing has since appeared in BBC Culture, New York magazine and Billboard. She currently curates and writes the Peabody Finds newsletter. Her own newsletter, Culture Trip, explores the intersections between pop culture, spirituality, and politics. For more information, go to jenniferkarmstrong.com & follow her @JMKArmstrong

Jim Wilson could have simply dismissed himself as a competent piano tuner-technician, even an exceptional one. But he was and is so much more, and it took the sudden death of a dear friend and the encouragement of a legendary singer/songwriter to prove it to him. From a broken home in Amarillo, Texas to a multi-award-winning recording artist, Jim Wilson’s journey is a captivating tale of showbiz glamour, personal tragedy, self-discovery, and dogged determination. And, as is typical of Jim Wilson, he’s turned out to be a pretty good wordsmith. Tuned-In: Memoirs of a Piano Man is a page-turner and a life-changer. It’s a self-help book in the form of an autobiography. It is entertaining, revealing and full of lessons for musicians, fans, and all readers. Jim Wilson’s life direction was set when he was given a guitar at age 7, then began composing songs at age 9. Soon after moving from West Texas to LA in his early 20’s, he gained a reputation as a respected piano technician, catering to the highest echelon of the music industry. Jim helped develop the first MIDI-adapter for acoustic piano in the 80’s, which became an instant hit with artists and studios around the world. Four of Jim’s ten recordings have hit the Billboard Top-20, he’s had two PBS specials, and his music has been streamed over 75 million times by fans around the globe. He was recently made a “Lifetime Member” of the Recording Academy. He enjoys scuba diving, skiing, pilot lessons, and mountain biking. Tuned In is Jim’s first book. For more information, visit www.jimwilsonmusic.com and follow him on Instagram @jimwilsonmusic

Jim Benton is an award winning cartoonist and author that regularly posts new comics across multiple platforms including GoComics, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur, Tumblr, Facebook and his own website. Dav Pilkey, creator of Captain Underpants says: “Jim Benton is a comic genius and a brilliant cartoonist.” And beloved MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés says: “Humor in print has many forms, what is amazing is that Jim Benton excels in all of them!” Jim is the creator of the brand It’s Happy Bunny®, which has sold over three-quarters of a billion dollars at retail. It’s won five top awards from the licensing industry, a NCS divisional award for greeting cards, and The American Librarians Association designated It’s Happy Bunny books as Top Picks for teen readers. His book series, Dear Dumb Diary–is a New York Times Best-seller, and is published in Ok15 languages. The series has over ten million books in print, and was made into a musical Made-For-TV movie, seen on Netflix and The Hallmark channel, which Jim co-wrote and produced. His series, Franny K. Stein, has sold over 5 million copies and is the winner of an Eleanor Cameron Award for kid’s science fiction. His cartoon collection, Dog Butts and Love. And Stuff like That. And Cats. was nominated for an Eisner Award. The sequel, Man, I Hate Cursive from Andrews McMeel was also nominated for an Eisner Award the following year. School Library Journal says that Benton’s 2019 title Clyde has a “sly wit!” and has listed it as a New and Noteworthy Read. And Kirkus Reviews says about his series Catwad from Scholastic “Preteens will be onboard immediately and asking for the next volume…” His newest graphic novel series Fann Club: Batman Squad was released in 2023 with DC Comics. In 2023, Jim accepted The Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comic Con for excellence in Comic Arts. For more information, visit www.jimbenton.com