Press Releases
Tri County Technical College

Anderson dot5.gif (848 bytes)Oconee ""Pickens

 
This release prepared by the Office of Public Relations and Marketing.
Rebecca Eidson, Director, 646-1507, reidson@tctc.edu
Lisa Garrett, Public Relations Associate, 646-1506, lgarrett@tctc.edu
 

Editorial Cartoonist, Author and Illustrator Kate Salley Palmer To Speak at Tri-County Technical College October 22

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10/15/2008

CONTACT: JENNIFER BEATTIE, 646-1333
(By Lisa Garrett)

PENDLETON --- Editorial cartoonist, caricaturist and Clemson author/illustrator Kate Salley Palmer will be on Tri-County Technical College’s Pendleton campus October 22 to talk about political cartooning, past and present, and its impact on our culture.

The presentation will begin at 1:30 p.m. in the Marshall J. Parker Auditorium.  She will discuss her book, Growing Up Cartoonist in the Baby Boom South: A Memoir and Cartoon Retrospective.   A question and answer session will follow.  The event, sponsored by the College’s Arts and Sciences Enrichment Series Committee, is free and open to the public.  For more information, contact Jennifer Beattie at 646-1333.

A native of Orangeburg, Palmer started her career while at the University of South Carolina where she was cartoonist for The Gamecock, the student newspaper.  Her cartoon strip, Terrible Tom and the Boys, caricatured the school's administration during the late 60's in a humorous way, and was popular with the students, faculty and administration.

After graduation from USC, she was an artist at Clemson University and later taught elementary school for two years.  After two children (James, now 29, and Salley, now 26), Palmer began doing political cartoons for The Greenville News and in 1978 became the first full-time editorial cartoonist in South Carolina.  While a cartoonist at The News, Palmer was one of three women members of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, won the National Freedom Foundation's Principal Award for Editorial Cartoonists, and was syndicated nationally in more than 200 newspapers by News America Syndicate.  Several of her cartoons were featured annually in the book, Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year.  In 1984 Palmer resigned from The Greenville News and freelanced for other state newspapers while remaining nationally syndicated until 1987.

In 1990, she illustrated her first children's picture book, How Many Feet in the Bed by Diane Johnston Hamm, and published by Simon and Schuster. Later that year, Simon and Schuster published A Gracious Plenty, a book she wrote and illustrated about her Great Aunt May Zeigler in Orangeburg.  In 1992, she illustrated Octopus Hug by Lawrence Pringle and published by Boyds Mills Press. Two other book illustrations by Palmer were Night of the Five Aunties (1995) by Mesa Somer and published by Albert Whitman Co., and Upstairs (1998) by Judith Ross Enderle and Stephanie Gordon Tessler and published by Boyds Mills Press.

Also during the 1990's, Palmer illustrated several Reading Recovery books for children written by various authors and published by the Kaeden Corporation.  In addition, she started a syndicated fax caricature service for newspapers called Just the Fax, and contributed several freelance op-ed columns for various newspapers, including ones about the Susan Smith trial (Newsday) and the O.J. Simpson verdict (The State).

In the fall of 1998, Palmer and her husband, Jim, started their own publishing company, Warbranch Press, Inc., to publish her children's picture books and possibly other books.  The company's first book was a new edition of A Gracious Plenty, which went out of print with Simon and Schuster.  The second book was The Pink House, a story of Palmer’s family's annual beach vacation to Edisto Island, SC.  In the fall of 1999, Warbranch Press published The Little Chairs.  Currently Palmer is seeking a publisher for her editorial cartoon retrospective/memoir and a new children's book called Don't Slam the Door.  She is also offering to newspapers nationwide, via e-mail, caricatures of national newsmakers.

 
.