Donna Barr
1318 North Montgomery
Brenerton, WA 98321-3056

Phone: (360) 377-0121
E-mail: dbarr@linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us
Web site: http://www.tooluser.com/barr


Since 1986, Donna Barr has been drawing and writing two Drawn Book series, THE DESERT PEACH, 
and STINZ, among others.

As the author of THE DESERT PEACH -- a history of the Desert Fox's Pretty Brother -- she is able to 
give the 20th century the treatment it deserves. STINZ is a fantasy based on a turn-of-the-century, central 
European farming Catholic Half-Horse stallion.  This series seems to be about a centaur, but is really 
about all us two-leggers.  She recently finished "Hader and the Colonel" in a series of short stories to be in 
MU Press's"ZU" through 1996 and 1997 (and which is available in its entirety on her website).

The three years she spent in the U.S. Army and a BA in German Language and Literature guarantee the 
factual background of her fictional characters.  Her work has been recognized by The WASHINGTON 
POST, and by the New York Public Library, which featured THE DESERT PEACH in its 1996 centennial 
exhibition.  She has been interviewed by America's COMICS JOURNAL and Britain's COMICS FORUM.  
In 1996, she received the Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comicon International, and in 1997, Seattle's 
Cartoonist Northwest's TOONIE award.  A musical based on THE DESERT PEACH ran through 
November 1992 in Seattle's Empty Space Theater.
 
Her latest book, STINZ's "A Stranger to Our Kind," appeared in January of 1997.  Further issues will be 
serialized in Labor of Love's "Glyph."  Her next book, "Miki," named after the female lead, is presently in 
progress; it takes place in 1945, and is brutally frank.  The original, unpublished STINZ novel (1981) will 
be serialized in Great Britain's "Comics Forum."

She is campaigning to establish the term "Drawn Book" to replace "comic book."  "Drawn Book" is being 
adopted all over the publishing industry, and is being used by reviewers and newspapers as a perfect 
solution for the terminology bugaboo that had so long haunted comics.  Under this broad, plain, simple  
title -- which means nothing more nor less than "a form of literature in which the art and the writing are 
equally important and perfectly balanced" -- no new terminologies need be learned by those unfamiliar 
with the field.  Clumsy industry jargon terms like "graphic novel" and "sequential art" may be disposed of, 
replaced by the recognized terms of the libraries and bookstores -- "novel," "periodical, "magazine," 
"humor," even "cookbook" and "poetry."  The civilian need only learn "Drawn Book," and be perfectly at 
home in the medium.  

Her web-page was declared by the NEW YORK TIMES to be "one of the premier sites in comics."