SPRINGFIELD, Mo., October 14, 2026 – Roz Chast, an award-winning cartoonist for The New Yorker, will be the featured speaker at Drury University’s 10th Annual Morrison Lecture, 6 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 28, at Clara Thompson Hall. Admission is free, and the lecture is open to the public.
The Morrison Lecture is named after Drury’s first president, Nathan Jackson Morrison, who was an early and staunch proponent of Drury’s Olin Library.
Chast is widely considered one of the most influential cartoonists of her generation, earning honors such as the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 2015, as well as National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2024. She joined The New Yorker in 1978 and has since published more than 1,000 cartoons in the publication. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Mother Jones and Town & Country.
Chast’s work typically focuses on what she calls “everyfolk” and addresses the universal topics of guilt, aging, families, money and more.
Her 2014 memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, about caring for her aging parents, became a critical and commercial success, winning major awards and becoming the first graphic novel to be named a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award. It also won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, and The National Endowment for the Arts has chosen the work for its annual Big Read program four times.
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Media Contact: Cris Belvin, Director of University Communications & Media Relations | (417) 873-7392 | gbelvin@drury.edu