Since joining The New Yorker in 1978, Roz Chast has established herself as one of our greatest artistic chroniclers of the anxieties, superstitions, furies, insecurities, and surreal imaginings of modern life. Her works are typically populated by hapless but relatively cheerful "everyfolk,” and she addresses the universal topics of guilt, aging, families, money, real estate, and, as she would say, "much, much more!" David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, has called her "the magazine's only certifiable genius."
In addition to her cartoons, Chast has incorporated her cast of recurring characters into other media , from pysanka eggs to hooked rugs.
Chast is also the author of numerous books, including Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? (2014), a work that chronicles her relationship with her aging parents as they shift from independence to dependence. Using handwritten text, drawings, photographs, and her keen eye for the foibles that make us human, Chast addresses the realities of what it is to get old in America today – and what it is to have aging parents today -- with tenderness and candor, and a good dose of her characteristic wit. Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? is a New York Times 2014 Best Book of the Year, 2014 National Book Award Finalist, winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize, and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for the best books of 2014, the first time a graphic novel received the prize for autobiography. The National Endowment for the Arts chose Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? for the 2018 and 2022 Big Read programs.
Her next two books will be Tired Town (Roaring Books, October 10, 2023) with Patricia Marx, and a book about dreams titled I Must Be Dreaming (Bloomsbury, October 23, 2023).