Cartoonist and Best-selling Author Roz Chast to Deliver 2022 Robert and Pamela Jacobs Lecture

Roz Chast, noted cartoonist for The New Yorker and best-selling author, will deliver the 2022 Robert and Pamela Jacobs Lecture with a talk called, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Jewish?” on Wednesday, April 27 at 4:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Auditorium.

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The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is hosted by the UMass Amherst Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. Chast will speak about her work, and its connection to Jewish themes and her Jewish background.

A book signing will follow Chast’s remarks and audience questions.

Since joining The New Yorker in 1978, Chast has established herself among the greatest artistic chroniclers of the anxieties, superstitions, furies, insecurities and surreal imaginings of modern life. Her works are typically populated by hapless but relatively cheerful “everyfolk,” and she addresses the universal topics of guilt, aging, families, money, real estate and more. She has been called a “certifiable genius” by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker.

Chast is the author of more than a dozen books for adults, including “Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?”, a work that chronicles her relationship with her aging parents as they shift from independence to dependence. The book, released in 2014, was a New York Times Best Book of the Year, National Book Award finalist, winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for the best books of 2014, the first time a graphic novel received the prize for autobiography.

In addition, Chast is the author of 11 other books for adults and numerous books for children.

The Robert and Pamela Jacobs Lecture Series in Jewish Culture provides public lectures by leading figures in contemporary Jewish thought, education, culture or politics. Each lecture may explore a specific theme, such as American Jewish history, Jewish art, the Holocaust or religious thought.