Guest Speaker KFOC 2016 Jen Sorensen

Award winning cartoonist Jen Sorensen has been drawing her weekly comic for over 15 years. Formerly known as "Slowpoke," the strip now simply goes by her name.

Jen's cartoons appear in numerous altweekly newspapers around the country, magazines such as The Progressive, In These Times, and Ms., and websites including Daily Kos, Truthout, and AlterNet. Her work has also been published in The Nation, The Village Voice, Politico, NPR.org, and MAD. She has created commissioned long-form comics for the ACLU, NPR, Kaiser Health News, The Oregonian, and other clients. In addition to drawing cartoons, Sorensen edits a comics section for Fusion, a new media company from ABC and Univision. 

Over the years, she has won several accolades for her work. In 2014, she was named the winner of the Herblock Prize, an award endowed by the legendary Washington Post cartoonist Herb Block, as well as the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2013, she was the recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and she also won the National Cartoonists Society Divisional Reuben Award for Editorial Cartoons. In 2015, Sorensen was given an Inkpot Award for career achievement in comic arts from the San Diego Comic-Con International.

Jen grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and went on to attend the University of Virginia, where she studied cultural anthropology and drew cartoons for college publications.

Additional fun fact: Jen was once clue “12 down” in the Time Out New York crossword puzzle.

Sorensen currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and small terrier.