She graduated with a BFA from RISD in 1977, and her first New Yorker cartoon was published in 1978. She became a full-time staff cartoonist in 1979. On August 4th, 1986, her got her first New Yorker full-color cover. Chast's cartoons are often slice-of-life send-ups, featuring interior scenes and people who are "generally hapless, cheerful 'everyfolk.'" She also occasionally contributes to the "Talk of the Town" and "Shouts & Murmurs" sections of the magazine. New Yorker editor David Remnick describes her as "the magazine's only certifiable genius."

Chast's work has also appeared in New York Magazine, Mother Jones, Scientific American, and the Harvard Business Review. She illustrated Steve Martin's 2007 book "The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z." In 2008 she published an anthology of her own work, "Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006."

She now lives in Ridgefield, CT with her husband, humorist Bill Frazen, and their two children.

[Image via AP]