Jeff Keane - Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Guest Speaker for 2014

Please join us as we welcome Jeff Keane when he appears next September at the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning running from Thursday, September 25th through Saturday, September 27th of 2014. 

Jeff was born in 1958. Two years later, his father Bil Keane started chasing him around begging him to do something funny. So began his career as a cartoon model for "The Family Circus." He now authors that comic, which appears daily in over 1,400 newspapers worldwide, making it the most widely syndicated panel in America today.

Raised in Arizona, Keane moved to California to attend the University of Southern California where in 1980 he received his BFA in Drama. After graduation, in an attempt to have a freer schedule for auditions, etc., he returned to his cartoon roots and began to assist on the feature. Jeff started out just answering mail and compiling books but, through years of his father’s guidance, has taken over the feature and is responsible for all aspects of creating the daily cartoon (writing, penciling, inking, coloring).

In 2007 Keane was elected President of the National Cartoonists Society. The NCS (founded in 1946) is recognized as the world's premier organization of professional cartoonists. He was re-elected in 2009 (becoming only the fourth two-term president in the NCS’s history). Along with a group of his NCS colleagues, Keane has done numerous trips with the USO visiting our troops in hospitals and military bases throughout the world (including both Iraq and Afghanistan).

Jeff and his wife Melinda live in Laguna Hills where they created three cartoon characters of their own (Spencer, Matilda and Olivia). Keane now chases his kids around begging them to do something funny. So "The Family Circus" keeps going around in circles.

Stay tuned to this official festival site as we continue to profile our guest speakers. 

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