Tom Toro

Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for gag cartoonist of the year.

Tom wrote and illustrated the children’s picture book “How to Potty Train Your Porcupine” (Little, Brown 2020) and the political cartoon collection “Tiny Hands” (Dock Street Press, 2017). He illustrated the civics book “A User’s Guide to Democracy” (Celadon Books, 2020), and he is illustrating Simon Rich’s debut picture book “I’m Terrified of Bath Time” (Little, Brown 2022).

Tom has written short stories for the New Haven Review, Slush Pile and Litro (UK), as well as contributing a dozen essays to the New Yorker Cartoon Encyclopedia. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize. Tom was an inaugural fellow at the Orchard Project Episodic Lab in screenwriting, where he developed a mixed animated TV series “The Strip.” He was also awarded a playwriting residency at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre Ground Floor. Tom is a lecturer on cartoon art, represented by the Cassidy & Fishman speakers bureau.

Tom attended NYU graduate film school, where he co-created films that played at Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes. Before that, Tom graduated cum laude from Yale, receiving the Betts Prize for his literary work while also serving as captain of the national-champion lightweight rowing team and cartoon editor for the Yale Herald. Tom grew up in El Cerrito, California.