Donna Barr

Award-winning alt comix artist best known for The Desert Peach

Donna Barr is the artist, writer and often publisher of the critically-acclaimed and much-awarded books and series: The Desert Peach, STINZ, Hader and The Colonel, and Bosom Enemies. Donna does it all - draws, writes, publishes, does theater and musicals, organizes comic conventions, and is happy to share how to do it all. That, and shares a million silly con stories from my 30+ years in comics, zines, cosplay, and everything in between. You can find all you need at www.donnabarr.com, including digital copies of The Desert Peach, Stinz (and more!).

Donna writes about guys, and how they hate and love each other. Common elements in her work are fantastic human/animal hybrids and German culture. She describes her most recognizable series The Desert Peach as having been inspired by "Love, Honor, Death and Tea, Surfing, fascism, obnoxious pilots and boyfriends, birth, love, hate, revenge, rape, child-murder, slavery, tribal customs, insanity, drug-use, prejudice, racism, death-camps, warfare, love-at-first-sight, homophobia, bad relationships, feminism, horse-training, camel-theft, fashion, marriage, euthanasia, grandchildren — etc., etc., etc".

Awards include: The Xeric Grant (2000), The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grant (2004), The San Diego Comicon International Inkpot (1996), the London Comic Creator's Guild's Best Ongoing Humor Series (1992), Seattle's Cartoonists' Northwest's Toonie (1998), and the Washington Press Association's Communicator of Excellence for Fiction (1997 and 1998). In 2016, Donna received a Golden Toonie Award from the Cartoonists Northwest Association. In 2022, she helped found Squatchcon - she is fondly referred to as the “fairy godmother” of the convention.

Donna is or has been a member of The Graphic Artists Guild, The National Writers Union, and is a consultant for the Media curriculum in the Arts Department at Olympic College, in Bremerton, Washington. Her life's work has been donated to the San Diego State University Special Collections.

Barr has illustrated several GURPS roleplaying books, including GURPS Ice Age and GURPS Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.

Barr also produced illustrations for the Traveller roleplaying books, including Alien Module 8: Darrians, the MegaTraveller Player's manual and several issues of both The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society and Challenge magazine.