W.R. (Bill) Friday was born in Pendleton, Oregon in 1942. He has been cartooning for almost 50 years. In 1953, he and his two older brothers along with several neighbor kids produced a neighborhood paper called the “Snooper Review.” Friday’s cartooning career began on the pages of that gossip sheet. His cartoons have since appeared in publications and exhibits worldwide, from Portland, Oregon to Saint Petersburg, Russia, winning state, regional and national awards and recognition. In 1984, Friday won a Scholastic Magazine Award for an educational computer disk entitled “A Children’s Word Game.”
Cartoons by Friday have appeared on HBO TV, in Life Magazine and on TV news programs in Eugene, Oregon. He has taught drawing, painting, cartooning, and been an Artist-in-Residence for the District 4-J schools in Eugene. He was self-syndicated for a short time in the early 1990s with gag writer Brad Cook. Together their political cartoons appeared in about twenty small western papers. Other cartoons by Bill appeared in the Bend Bulletin, the Eugene Register Guard, the Klammath Falls Herald News, the McKenzie Weekly, Old Oregon Magazine, the Sagebrush News, the cover of Earthwatch Oregon, and American Timberman and Trucker . Bill Friday lives in Bend, Oregon, spending his summers living in a forest fire lookout tower.
References: Friday, William R.The Thin Black Line: 30 Years of Cartooning.Bend, Oregon:Podunk Press,1999.
From the guide to the W.R. (Bill) Friday Papers, 1972-2009, (Western Washington University Heritage Resources)
