Next up in my series of short profiles is Emily Flake. Born in Manchester Connecticut, Emily received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration from the Maryland College of Art. She sold her first cartoon to The New Yorker in 2008, and her work has also appeared The New York Times, Time and many other publications. Her weekly comic strip has appeared in numerous alternative newsweeklies since 2002.
Although she went to art school, Emily always begins creating her cartoons by writing. New Yorker cartoons are equal parts drawing and writing, the two elements have to dance together seamlessly. All of us cartoonists approach the creation of this unique art form differently.
Emily is part of a generation of cartoonists who also are stand-up comics. She runs a monthly stand-up show called FDK at Young Ethel’s in Brooklyn, and she’s performed many other places around New York City.
Her humor is sometimes a bit dark, and she herself will admit she enjoys going for crude humor. Her edgy cartoons are sometimes about parenting, but just as often about hip Brooklynite thirty and fourty year olds.
Her color work often appears in the pages of The New Yorker in a longer strip format under the Shouts and Murmurs or Sketchbook sections.
