 Rutu Modan was born in Tel-Aviv in 1966. In 1992 she graduated cum laude from the illustration program at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Shortly after graduating, she began regularly writing and illustrating comic strips and stories for Israel's leading daily newspapers, as well as editing the Israeli edition of MAD magazine with Yirmi Pinkus. Together, they founded Actus Tragicus, an internationally acclaimed collective and independent publishing house for alternative comic artists, in 1995. The following year she collaborated with Israeli author Etgar Keret on her first graphic novel, Nobody Said it Was Going to Be Fun, an Israeli bestseller. Rutu has worked as an illustrator for magazines and books in Israel and abroad, with illustrations published in The New York Times, New Yorker and Le Monde, among many other renowned publications.
She has received much recognition for her work, including four Best Illustrated Children's Book Awards from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The Israel Ministry of Culture named Rutu Modan the Young Artist of the Year in 1997, and she was one of the contributors to the Eisner-Nominated Actus Tragicus anthology Jet Lag in 1999. In 2001 she won the Andersen Award for Illustration from the International Board on Books for Young People in Basel, Switzerland, and was nominated for the Ignatz Award for Best Story and Promising New Talent for her story �Bygone� in Flipper, Vol. 2 (Actus Tragicus / Top Shelf.) She has been a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation since 2005, and in 2006 she was nominated for the Angoul�me Festival's Goccini Award, granted to a scriptwriter whose past year's work deserves special praise.
Drawn & Quarterly published Rutu's first solo graphic novel Exit Wounds simultaneously with publishers in England, France, Italy and Spain. It received much critical acclaim, and was named "Best Comic of the Year" by Entertainment Weekly and The Mercury News, and included in "Best Of" lists from Time, The Washington Post, The Oklahoman, Heeb, Publisher's Weekly, and New York Magazine. It was also nominated for a Quill Award for best graphic novel.
Rutu has taught comics and illustration at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and she usually lives in Tel-Aviv with her family; however, much to her surprise, she is currently living in Sheffield, England.
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