Another Saturday Night of Wild and Reckless Abandon
(A modern Everywoman, Cathy has endeared herself to millio...)
A modern Everywoman, Cathy has endeared herself to millions of fans who share her daily struggles with the four basic guilt groups: Food, Love, Mother and Career.
(A collection for the frazzled modern woman who is forever...)
A collection for the frazzled modern woman who is forever plagued by the innate love of chocolate, and who is constantly in search of at least a semi-decent romance in the midst of career demands and parents who always have advice.
(This collection features some of the couple's (Cathy and ...)
This collection features some of the couple's (Cathy and Irving's) most memorable moments from throughout their long relationship, but the spotlight shines most on the year that included the unexpected "ring find," the proposal, the "YES," and the frenetic wedding plans that Cathy and Mom both endure and perpetuate.
Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault: Essays from the Grown-up Years
(Cathy Guisewite's first collection of funny, wise, poigna...)
Cathy Guisewite's first collection of funny, wise, poignant, and incredibly honest essays about being a woman in what she lovingly calls "the panini generation."
(This is an original book that will show how glorious, com...)
This is an original book that will show how glorious, complex, intense, entwined, incomprehensibly deep, and amazingly beautiful mother-daughter bond truly is.
Cathy Lee Guisewite is an American cartoonist. She is a creator of the comic strip, Cathy, which humorously chronicles the ups and downs of a single woman's life.
Background
Guisewite was born on September 5, 1950, in Dayton, Ohio, United States. She is the daughter of William L. and Anne Guisewite. She grew up in Midland, Michigan. Cathy Lee Guisewite has two sisters, older sister Mary Anne Nagy and younger sister Mickey.
Education
Cathy Guisewite graduated from Midland High School in 1968. She completed her studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1972, receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
Guisewite earned several Honorary doctorates from such places as Rhode Island College, Russell Sage College and Eastern Michigan University.
Guisewite became a writer for the Campbell-Ewald agency in suburban Detroit, Michigan, in 1972, and the following year she joined Norman Prady, Ltd., leaving it in 1974. Shortly thereafter, she moved to the advertising firm of W. B. Doner & Co. (the present-day Doner Company) in Southfield, Michigan, where she worked as a writer at first and was appointed group supervisor in 1975. She became a vice president of the firm in 1976.
Concurrently, Cathy Guisewite drew funny pictures as an "emotional coping mechanism" to different events in her life and work, and she would forward them to her parents. Her mother urged her to send them to a publisher. Eventually, she followed this advice. "My entire goal with my submission package was to get my mother off my back. My goal was not to do a comic strip. It was to make Mom quit telling me I could do a comic strip."
Soon, the publishing company sent Guisewite a contract to produce a comic strip. Cathy was syndicated to 66 newspapers in 1976 by Universal Press Syndicate, now Universal Uclick. She managed to preserve her advertising job, working during the day, and produced comics at night.
Cathy Guisewite's first cartoon book, The Cathy Chronicles, (1978) was a huge success. She moved to California in 1980 and set up her own studio in her Los Angeles ranch house. Her first book was followed by What Do You Mean, I Still Don't Have Equal Rights??!!, 1980; What's a Nice Single Girl Doing with a Double Bed??!, 1981; Cathy's Valentine's Day Survival Book, How to Live through Another February 14, 1982; Climb Every Mountain, Bounce Every Check, 1983; Thin Thighs in Thirty Years, 1986; and Revelations from a 45-Pound Purse, 1993, among others.
Guisewite became an illustrator of Mickey Guisewite's, her sister's book, Dancing Through Life in a Pair of Broken Heels. She also appeared several times as a guest on the late-night TV series The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
At the peak of the strip's popularity in the mid-1990s, almost 1,400 of Guisewite's papers appeared. However, on August 11, 2010, Cathy Guisewite announced the strip's retirement after 34 years of success. Its run ended on October 3, 2010 (a Sunday strip).
According to Guisewite, each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens.
Quotations:
"When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye."
"Food, love, career, and mothers, the four major guilt groups."
"Sometimes the best Christmas present is remembering what you've already got."
"Everyday is a new beginning and a chance to blow it."
"Men date. Women have relationships."
Membership
Cathy Guisewite was a member of the National Cartoonists Society.
Personality
Cathy Guisewite reportedly told the same audience that if she had to do one thing over, she would not have given her comic-strip character the same name as her own. Guisewite stated that she found it humiliating that readers might assume they were reading about the "less-than-perfect" moments in her own personal life.
Typically, Guisewite starts her day early, with her dog, Trolley, underneath her drawing desk, and a jar of M&M candies at her side.
Cathy Guisewite's mother started to collect wedding silver for her daughter when Cathy was still a baby. When Guisewite remained single at the age of 35 years old, her mother gave up all hope and handed the collected pieces to her daughter, assuming she would continue being a single career woman.
Connections
Cathy Guisewite adopted daughter Ivy in 1992. In 1997 she married Christopher Wilkinson, a screenwriter, in Los Angeles, California. Wilkinson had one son, Cooper, from his previous marriage. The couple had no children together. They divorced in 2010.