Speaker: Kate Salley Palmer

Kate is a native of Orangeburg and a graduate of the University of South Carolina. While at USC she did a cartoon strip for The Gamecock satirizing the school’s administration, entitled “Terrible Tom and the Boys”. In 1978, Kate became the first full-time staff editorial cartoonist for a SC newspaper at The Greenville News. Kate’s political cartoons were nationally syndicated in more than 200 newspapers, and in 1980 she won the Freedom Foundation’s George Washington Honor Medal for Editorial Cartooning. In 2000, one of her cartoons made Newsweek’s Special Edition, “100 Years in Cartoons” – the only woman political cartoonist featured. In 2006, Clemson University’s Digital Press published Kate’s memoir, Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby Boom South, which got a good review in Comics Journal.

In the 1990’s Kate began writing and illustrating picture books for children, and has had over 25 published by national and regional publishers. How Many Feet in the Bed?, published by Simon and Schuster in 1991, and Octopus Hug, Boyds Mills Press in 1993, received great reviews and are still in print. In 2000, Kate and husband, Jim, a retired Clemson professor, started Warbranch Press to publish Kate’s picture books. Warbranch Press has published 10 books and has sold over 60,000 copies, with the South Carolina-themed books, such as The Pink House, Palmetto-Symbol of Courage and Francis Marion and the Legend of the Swamp Fox, the most popular.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Kate produced an informative cartoon coloring book, 2016 Race for the White House: A Grownup Coloring Book. She did another campaign coloring book for 2020.

Kate makes presentations to teacher groups, civic clubs and other gatherings. Her topics vary. Cartoons; stories from cartoonist’s conventions; various picture books, and the 400- page graphic novel of Pride and Prejudice she did in 2019.

She is a member of the AAEC (American Association of Editorial Cartoonists) and the National Cartoonist Society’s Southeastern Branch. Kate’s original state cartoons are housed in the USC Library’s SC Political Collections and her national cartoons and papers are archived at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at Ohio State University. She learned recently that the Clemson University Press is planning to publish a second edition of her memoir, “Growing Up Cartoonist…”

Kate and Jim live in Clemson. For more about Kate and her books go to www.warbranchpress.com.

Click here for the application to have Kate Salley Palmer speak in your community.