Author Event, Cuyler Black

Cartoonist Cuyler Black Returns to St. Mark’s

Join us in the library to greet Cuyler Black and hear him speak to the funny side of faith. Cuyler last visited us just when The Lion’s Den had opened and had just published his wonderful book What’s That Funny Look on Your Faith? Returning two years later, he now has a fantastic selection of note cards, calendars, magnets and notepads. Each funnier than the next.

Cuyler will speak at 11:30 a.m. in the library and then sign books in the hall outside the store, where his complete line of Inherit The Mirth^® products will be available. Perfect Christmas gifts!
Raised in a Christian household filled with laughter, writer and artist, Cuyler Black knows God has a great sense of humor. One of his favorite Bible verses is Genesis 21:6: "God has brought me laughter."

Growing up in Ottawa, Ontario, the son of a seventh-generation minister and a musical-comedy actress, Cuyler began cartooning at an early age. At ten, he had a regular comic strip called Ollie the Alligator in a local weekly newspaper. At 17, he created Furtree High, a daily comic strip about teen life in the Ottawa Citizen, the city’s largest paper, and continued it for the next six and a half years. After graduating with a degree in English Literature from Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, Cuyler transitioned out of everyday cartooning, acquired a Bachelor of Education and taught high school English, History and Special Education for several years, while continuing to do some freelance illustration for magazines and text books, plus part-time youth ministry.

In the late ‘90s the comic strip bug bit again, and Cuyler produced a new syndicated feature, The Swan Factory, about antics at a health club. After two years in newspapers across North America, he chose to end the strip however and pursue a calling to full-time youth ministry, accepting a position at an Episcopal church in Connecticut in 2000.

In In 2003 yet another new cartoon creation was demanding much more of his attention and developed into Cuyler’s full-time work by 2008. Inherit The Mirth^®, combining Cuyler’s love of cartooning with his Christian faith, is a line of greeting cards, calendars, books and other products, taking an off-the-wall approach to the lighter side of faith.