Chester Brown

Chester Brown was born in Montreal, Canada on May 16, 1960 and grew up in the nearby suburb of Chateauquay. His career path was set at the age of 12 when the local newspaper, The St. Lawrence Sun, published one of his comic strips.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

At 19, he moved to Toronto and got a day job while he worked on his skills as a cartoonist at night and on weekends. In 1983, he began to self-publish his work in photocopied �mini comics� under the title Yummy Fur. These pamphlets attracted attention in comic book industry publications, and in 1986 the Toronto-based comic book publisher Vortex Comics approached Brown. The first Vortex issue of Yummy Fur sold well, and Brown quit his day job and began working full-time as a cartoonist.

In the pages of Yummy Fur, Brown serialized a bleakly humorous story called Ed the Happy Clown which was published as a graphic novel in 1989 and went on to win several awards.

In 1991, Chris Oliveros managed to convince Brown to sign on with Oliveros�s new comic book company, Drawn & Quarterly. Brown�s The Playboy was released in 1992 and was the first graphic novel published by D+Q.

In 1994, Drawn & Quarterly published I Never Liked You. Brown believes that this autobiographical work about his adolescence is his best book.

Brown was persuaded in 1998 to assemble a book collecting his shorter pieces: The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995.

Also in 1998, Brown began work on Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography which was finally completed in mid-2003 and collected as a critically acclaimed graphic novel later that year.