Liz Montague doesn’t eat her feelings. She’s proud to say that she draws them instead.

But after a few years in the design industry, the young cartoonist who centers black characters in her art found herself with one particular feeling that most marginalized creatives can’t escape: “the white male perspective is the universal perspective, and everyone else is niche.”

So as a black woman with something to say, she did just that – with a strongly worded letter to the editorial desk of The New Yorker, famously known for its excellence – and limited creative viewpoints – in cartooning.

Little did she know that letter would land in the inbox of the New Yorker’s brand new and first ever female cartoon editor, Emma Allen, who couldn’t have agreed with Liz more. When Emma took the refreshing step of asking for suggestions on diverse up-and-coming cartoonists for possible inclusion, Liz took a deep breath, a leap of faith, and responded boldly:

“Me.”

And that’s the story of how in 2019, 23-year-old Liz Montague became the first ever black female cartoonist published in the New Yorker.

But Liz’s hand up was far from a hand out. As a weekly magazine, the New Yorker receives thousands of cartoon submissions per issue, and only selects 10 to 20 for publication. Last year, an impressive 4 of those belonged to first-timer Liz, but she’s transparent about the fact that in such a competitive pool, the publication of those 4 was only after submitting over 150 cartoons and drawing countless more. Perhaps she’s TOO humble though. One of those 4 cartoons made the New Yorker’s Top 25 Cartoons of 2019 as voted by its 2.4 million Instagram followers.

“It’s a dream come true,” she marvels, but the gravity of her accomplishments isn’t lost on her either. “Unfortunately, the standard for people of color is that we don’t get to tell our own stories,” and having the rare privilege to be a black woman in creative control of her storytelling is something she says “I don’t take for granted. I don’t take that lightly.”

And she’s got a vast portfolio to prove it. When she’s not putting in work to make the New Yorker’s pages more inclusive, she’s drawing for her weekly comic in the Washington City Paper, “Liz at Large.” There and on her Instagram, she’s practicing self-care through illustration – sketching out her inner anxieties, personal victories, shower thoughts, and encouraging herself too. It’s also where she doubles down on her commitment to diversity, using bright colors and simple text blocks in nearly all of her panels to make her comics as accessible to all readers as possible.

It’s a labor of love that means more to Liz than just likes, laughs or critical acclaim. It’s how she’s dedicated her gift to a world where it’s perhaps more important than ever that “stories lead to understanding, understanding leads to empathy, and empathy leads to equality.”

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