Ruben Bolling is the winner of the 2021 Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons from the National Press Foundation. He is the author of the weekly comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug, distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication to newspapers across North America. The comic strip has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and hundreds of other newspapers.
“Tom the Dancing Bug” also is currently featured every week on BoingBoing.net, one of the most linked-to websites in the world, DailyKos.com, the premier online political community website, and GoComics.com, the largest comics website.
He accepted the Berryman award at the National Press Foundation’s annual awards dinner May 4, 2022 in Washington, D.C.
Ruben Bolling is a two-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning, in 2019 and 2021.
Bolling won the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartooning and was awarded the 2017 Herblock Prize for Editorial Cartooning, after being the Finalist in 2016. He also was the 2014 Gold Medal Winner for the Society of Illustrators Comic Strip Awards. He is a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner (Society of Professional Journalists), a multiple Harvey Award nominee, and a five-time winner of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Cartoon Award.
In 2020, Bolling was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons.
Ruben Bolling has authored three curated Tom the Dancing Bug compilation books: Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2004); All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats (NBM Publishing, 1997); and Tom the Dancing Bug (HarperCollins, 1992). Bolling is also the author/illustrator of The EMU Club Adventures, a series of science fiction/humor books for kids, published by Andrews McMeel Publishing.
In 2020, Clover Press started a multi-volume book program of “The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug.” Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse, collecting all comics from 2016-2019 was published in August, 2020. Neil Gaiman wrote the Foreword, and blurbs were provided by Gary Gulman, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Peter Sagal, Matt Groening, Seth Meyers, and Mark Hamill.
This November, Tom the Dancing Bug Awakens, will continue the program, collecting 2012-2015, followed by the publication of Tom the Dancing Bug: Eat the Poor, collecting 2007-2011, next Spring. Future volumes will be released, eventually collecting the complete comic strip, back to its origin in 1990.
In addition to the weekly comic strip, Ruben Bolling has had original comics published in such magazines as Nickelodeon, Mad Magazine, ESPN The Magazine and Harper’s. The New Yorker has published twelve full-page color cartoons by Bolling. He had a limitedrun daily comic strip, Donald and John, that ran on TheNib.com for the five weeks before the 2016 presidential election, which won the 2017 National Cartoonists Society Best Online Comic award.
Ruben Bolling lives in New York City.
