Weinstein, Lauren R.

PERSONAL:

Education: Washington University, B.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—lauren@laurenweinstein.com.

CAREER:

Artist and author. Drawing and cartooning instructor in New York, NY, including at the 92nd Street YMCA, the Parsons School of Design, the School of Visual Arts, and the YMCA's Makor/Steinhardt Center; former codesigner of Web site StoryArk.com. Performer with the band Flaming Fire.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Xeric Grant, 2003, for Inside Vineyland; Ignatz award, 2004, for promising new talent.

WRITINGS:

Inside Vineyland (comics collection), c. 2003.

Girl Stories, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to Anthology of Graphic Fiction, edited by Ivan Brunetti. Contributor of comics and drawings to various periodicals, including Glamour, McSweeney's, New York Times, LA Weekly, Chicago Reader, and Stranger, and to comic anthologies, including Legal Action Comics, Hotwire, Kramer's Ergot, Scheherazade, and the Ganzfeld.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lauren R. Weinstein is a writer and artist with a particular interest in graphic novels and cartooning. In Girl Stories, Weinstein focuses on writing over art in a series of stories that she wrote over a seven-year period. The stories make up a loose narrative about a teenage girl during her eighth- and ninth-grade years, chronicling various bouts of angst and oddities of teen life in a humorous fashion. Rob Clough observed in Sequart: "Weinstein accomplishes something remarkable here: writing a book as though it were written by a typically self-centered 14-year old girl but with the wit and self-awareness of an adult." Lisa Goldstein, writing for Library Journal, called the stories in Weinstein's collection "simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking." Kliatt contributor George Galuschak asserted that "Weinstein's recollection of being a teenager is dead-on."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2006, Tina Coleman, review of Girl Stories, p. 56.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of Girl Stories, p. 418.

Kliatt, July 1, 2006, George Galuschak, review of Girl Stories, p. 30.

Library Journal, July 1, 2006, Lisa Goldstein, review of Girl Stories, p. 131.

Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2006, review of Girl Stories, p. 43; May 22, 2006, "Comic Artists," p. 54.

School Library Journal, July 1, 2006, Lisa Goldstein, review of Girl Stories, p. 131.

ONLINE

Lauren Weinstein Home Page,http://www.laurenweinstein.com (May 23, 2007).

Sequart,http://www.sequart.com/ (August 31, 2006), Rob Clough, "Let's All Laugh at (and with) Lauren Weinstein."