Arts on Fire: The Art of Editorial Cartooning

“SO YOU THINK THAT’S FUNNY? The Art of Editorial Cartooning”

A live-audience talk show, Arts on Fire will spotlight The Art of Editorial Cartooning—a lively evening of art, satire, and conversation featuring two of Montreal’s most outspoken and creative voices.

Frederic Serre and Anthony “Napoleon” Bonaparte are both multi-award-winning editorial cartoonists whose distinctive styles are instantly recognizable to thousands of weekly readers. They will join us to talk about their respective careers in local media, their battles and triumphs, and the inspirations behind their favourite cartoons—including some that were deemed too controversial for mainstream media. The Arts on Fire series is hosted and moderated by artist, author, and former Concordia Journalism professor Wayne Larsen.

FREDERIC SERRE is a veteran cartoonist and newspaper journalist with more than 35 years of experience in the local media industry. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Montreal Gazette. He is the director of FSI Media, a Montreal-based freelance communications company, and has served as the communications officer for the Quebec RCMP Members’ Association, as well as editing the organization’s annual magazine. In 2020, he was named best cartoonist by l’Association des journaux communautaires du Québec.

ANTHONY BONAPARTE has been the Arts & Features editor at The Suburban, Quebec’s largest English weekly newspaper, since February 2006. During his almost 35 years in the newspaper industry, he has won numerous Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards, as well as North American (SNA/LMA) and Canadian (CCNA) awards for writing and editing, but more importantly as an editorial cartoonist under his pen name, Napoleon. His first cartoons were published in The Link, one of Concordia University’s student newspapers, when he was studying history and economics in the early 1990s.