Ann Telnaes

Ann Carolyn Telnaes (; born November 15, 1960 ) is an American editorial cartoonist. She creates cartoons in forms including animation, visual essays, live sketches, and traditional print. She worked for The Washington Post from 2008 until her resignation on January 3, 2025. She held a solo exhibition at the Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in 2004. In 2020, her work was included in the exhibit Women in Comics: Looking Forward, Looking Back at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. She is a member of the advisory board of the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation that is based in Geneva and a former member of the board of directors of Cartoonists Rights Network International. She has won two Pulitzer Prizes.

Biography Ann Telnaes was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1960. She was graduated from Reno High School in Reno, Nevada in 1979. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1973.

Telnaes earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the California Institute of the Arts in 1985, focusing on character animation.

Before becoming an editorial cartoonist, she worked in the animation field and also as a show designer for Walt Disney Imagineering. thumb

Telnaes began working for The Washington Post in 2008. In 2015, a Telnaes cartoon was removed by the Washington Post from the newspaper's website. The cartoon had depicted Ted Cruz as an organ grinder with two monkeys. Telnaes defended her cartoon by tweeting, "Ted Cruz has put his children in a political ad—don't start screaming when editorial cartoonists draw them as well."

In January 2025, Telnaes resigned from The Washington Post after her cartoon lampooning powerful media and technology billionaires and a corporation mascot performing obeisance before president-elect Donald Trump was rejected by opinions editor David Shipley. Included in the sketch were OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Post owner Jeff Bezos, Meta/Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg offering bags of money, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong, and a prostrate Disney mascot Mickey Mouse (representing Disney subsidiary ABC News). Shipley stated that his editorial decision was based on the piece's redundancy with other content that had recently been published by or been approved for publication in the Post. Telnaes responded to the situation with a post to her online newsletter.

Personal life Telnaes lives in Washington, D.C.

Awards Telnaes is the second female cartoonist and one of the few freelancers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. She was the first woman to receive both the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning and the Reuben Award.

1996 Best Cartoonist, The Population Institute XVII Global Media Awards Best Editorial Cartoonist, Sixth Annual Environmental Media Awards Reuben Award (National Cartoonists Society), finalist 1997 — National Headliner Award for Editorial Cartoons 2001 — Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning 2002 — Maggie Award for Editorial Cartoons, now known as The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Media Excellence Awards 2003 — Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award (National Press Foundation) 2011 — Herblock Prize, finalist 2015 — Great Immigrants Award from Carnegie Corporation of New York 2021 — EWK Prize, winner 2022 — Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary, finalist 2023 — Herblock Prize, winner 2025 — Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary