Picture-Book Author Draws on Experiences for New Cartooning Book
For Immediate Release, May 23, 2006
CLEMSON, SC--Kate Salley Palmer, who has in recent years become known for her work as a picture-book author and illustrator, has a new book out. This time, however, it is not a story about a trip to Edisto Island or the exploits of the “Swamp Fox,” Francis Marion. In Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South: A Memoir and Cartoon Retrospective, published by Clemson University Digital Press, Palmer tells the story of her former life as a political cartoonist. In the new book, which doubles as her first cartoon collection, Palmer describes this strange political animal—“the real artist’s evil twin”—and her accidental journey to discovering that she was one.
As Palmer, a baby-boomer and Orangeburg native, writes, “Aspiring Southern ladies of my generation knew very well what ‘nice’ girls did—and did not—say, wear, and do. And we tried not to get caught saying, wearing, or doing the wrong things.” But this proved to be a challenge for Palmer growing up. Cursed with a short attention span and a tendency to daydream, piddle, and generally goof off, she was always getting called down in class and sent to detention hall—the only girl in a room full of boys. She was a minor scandal to her family.
But then, so are all cartoonists—as she learned at her first cartoonist’s convention some fifteen years later. Most of them are not women, however.
Palmer, as it turns out, was an inadvertent trailblazer. In the early 1970s, she freelanced, selling a few of the cartoons she couldn’t stop drawing to whatever local newspapers (notably Clemson’s Messenger) would buy them. In 1975, she was hired by The Greenville News as that paper’s first-ever political cartoonist. By the next year, the News was running her cartoons regularly, making her South Carolina’s first full-time political cartoonist—and, she discovered, one of only two women then employed as full-time political cartoonists in all of North America.
In Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South, Palmer relates her unique and often funny adventures as a political cartoonist, as well as her efforts “to stay married and raise decent children” while making the 35-mile daily commute from her home in Clemson to the job she loved. At that time, the middle-class working mother was still a much-criticized novelty. Palmer, too disorganized to juggle her responsibilities with picture-perfect grace, is still notorious around Clemson for taking her kids to school in her pajamas.
Although she left The Greenville News in 1984, Palmer’s syndicate continued to distribute her cartoons to over 200 newspapers nationwide until 1989. Soon after that, however, a lack of steady work forced her to give up her cartooning career. Instead, she devoted herself full-time to writing, illustrating, and selling picture books. Though she loves her new job, she still goes to cartoonist’s conventions and draws cartoons for fun.
Palmer’s cartoons often sparked heated local debate. Some readers praised her irreverent style, while others sent in angry letters demanding that her cartoons be left out of their newspapers. Her husband, Jim Palmer (who now manages their publishing business), kept getting cornered at parties by readers either furious or admiring. In 1976, she began including her maiden name, “Salley,” in her signature, worried that her husband’s family was being singled out to take the blame for her cartoons.
One cartoon in particular—which poked fun at South Carolina legislators’ efforts to cut the budget while spending lavishly on themselves—so enraged state lawmakers that they denounced her on the floor of the South Carolina Senate. When Palmer’s then-editor at The Greenville News, Jim McKinney, called her at home to give her the news, she immediately apologized for causing trouble for the paper. McKinney, however, couldn’t have been happier. He felt the denunciation proved the quality of her work and was therefore great publicity.
Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South is part funny, bittersweet memoir, part visual romp, with fully half of its pages devoted to reproductions of Palmer’s cartoons and drawings—including several recent creations appearing in print for the first time. The cartoons are arranged chronologically by year, making it easy to follow the development of political and social issues over the decades. The late 1970s, in particular, were plagued by problems remarkably similar to those of our own time (high gas prices and militant Islamicism leap to mind), and a surprising number of Palmer’s cartoons could easily run today.
Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby-Boom South:
A Memoir and Cartoon Retrospective
ISBN 0-9771263-4-x
$19.95 • x + 188 pages • 8.5” x 11”
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Clemson University Digital Press
Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing
Strode Tower, Box 340522
Clemson University
Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0522.
http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp