University and Spectrum alumnus Tom Toles, whose biting political cartoons appear in newspapers across the nation, has been awarded journalism's most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize.
Toles, who has worked for The Buffalo News since 1982, won the award on Thursday for a series of 10 cartoons on national issues which he penned in 1989, the News reported.
A 1973 graduate of UB, Toles was a staff artist for The Spectrum during his college years. During that time, his drawing style was quite different from the trademark wide-space art and "double-whammy" jabs that characterize his work today.
Toles was hired as a graphic artist, drawing caricatures and other illustrations for the now-defunct Buffalo Courier-Express in 1973. Eventually, he was asked to do an editorial cartoon, and his career as a political satirist had begun, the News said.
Today, his work is syndicated in more than 100 newspapers across the United States.
Toles, 38, was also one of three finalists in the running for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize competition. Still, he maintains that he was "surprised" by the announcement.
Toles, a Hamburg native, says he never took an art lesson.
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
