Sharon Murdoch

Born in Invercargill, of Ngai Tahu and English descent, Sharon Murdoch moved to Wellington to study graphic design. After graduating she worked as a designer, most notably with Wellington Media Collective, an activist based design group, whose work was the subject of a recent exhibition at Victoria University and the University of Auckland galleries. In 1999/2000, under the auspices of VSA, she worked in South Africa with a Xhosa women’s community and child development group on AIDs prevention and early childhood education.

Sharon Murdoch has been cartooning for about four years — initially doing a single-panel series called Munro, about a ginger cat and his mouse friend, which incorporates a clue from the newspaper crossword. That series is published five days a week in the Christchurch Press and three days a week in the Dominion Post, as well as in a number of provincial papers.

For the past three years she has occasionally filled the cartooning spot at the Dominion Post and the Waikato Times, and produces two political cartoons a week for the Christchurch Press. In December 2014 she was appointed political cartoonist for the Sunday Star Times.

As far as is known, she is the first woman to have a regular political cartooning spot in a New Zealand newspaper. She was a finalist for Cartoonist-of-the-Year award at the Canon Media Awards in 2014 and 2015, and won in 2016.

Sharon Murdoch is married with a daughter, step-daughter and two cats (one named Munro).