Jules Feiffer, one of American's most influential editorial cartoonists, is also a playwright, novelist, screenwriter and author of children's books. His Pulitzer prize-winning trademark cartoon style, widely imitated by younger generations of political cartoonists, typically features sparely drawn, neurotic characters, appearing against blank backgrounds, and emoting or agonizing over news events and personal problems. His cartoon strip, Feiffer, appeared in the Village Voice from 1956 to 1997, and in 1996 a retrospective exhibition of his work appeared at the Library of Congress. His cartoon collections include Feiffer on Nixon: The Cartoon Presidency (1974), Ronald Reagan in Movie America: A Jules Feiffer Production (1988), and Feiffer: The Collected Works, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (1998, 1989, 1992).

Feiffer's work in other genres is characterized by the same talent for social satire and commentary. His 1967 play Little Murders is a brutal black comedy that examines one New York City family's encounters with random and senseless violence. The play received a number of prestigious awards, including the London Theatre Critics, Outer Circle Critics and Obie Awards. New York Times theater reviewer Clive Barnes said of Little Murders "[Feiffer] muses on urban man, the cesspool of urban man's mind, the beauty of his neurosis, and the inevitability of his wilting disappointment." Little Murders was adapted to film in 1971 starring Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd. Feiffer's other plays include the Obie-winning White House Murder Case (1970), Knock Knock (1976), Elliot Loves (1989) and Anthony Rose (1990).

Feiffer was born in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1929. At the age of five he won a gold medal in an art contest, a reward gained so effortlessly that it immediately decided him upon a career. After high school, he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York and attended drawing classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

He sought employment with several comic strip artists, including Will Eisner, creator of "The Spirit," who allowed Feiffer to write scripts for him until the aspiring cartoonist was drafted into the Army at what he claims was a slight increase in pay. From 1949 to 1951 Feiffer drew a Sunday cartoon-page feature called "Clifford," which ran in six newspapers.
Feiffer then served a two-year stint in the Signal Corps, which he described as his passive resistance period. He spent his off hours drawing anti-military cartoons and during this time developed the character of Munro, the four-year-old boy drafted by mistake, into the Army.

After he got out of the Army, Feiffer drifted from one job to another, managing not to get fired until he worked the six months required to collect unemployment insurance. During his non-working period he turned out a book of cartoons called Sick, Sick, Sick. In April of 1958 Feiffer's Sick, Sick, Sick, subtitled A Guide to Non-confident Munro was awarded The Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the best short-subject cartoon of the year. Critic Gilbert Millstein has depicted Feiffer as being "alone and unafraid in a world made of just about all of the intellectual shams and shibboleths to which our culture subscribes."

Feiffer also likes to write occasional novels, publishing his first, Harry the Rat with Women in 1963, and his second, Ackroyd in 1967. He is also author of the screenplays for Little Murders, Carnal Knowledge and Popeye.

The Man in the Ceiling was Jules Feiffer's first book for children. Highly praised in The New York Times and elsewhere, it was selected by Publishers Weekly and The New York Public Library as one of the best children's books of 1993. Since then Feiffer has released A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears (1995), his first all-color picture book, Meanwhile (1997), I Lost My Bear (1998) an, George (1999), I’m Not Bobby! (2001)

Jules Feiffer is the only cartoonist to have a comic strip published by The New York Times. Feiffer’s cartoons have also appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine and The New Yorker.

Feiffer recently donated his papers and several hundred cartoons and manuscripts to the Library of Congress. The exhibit spanned Feiffer's entire professional career, including early cartoons for The Village Voice and manuscripts for his plays Little Murders and Carnal Knowledge.

In May of 1997, Jules Feiffer left the Village Voice following a salary dispute. He became a Senior Fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Jules Feiffer and his wife live in New York City and on Martha's Vineyard and have three daughters.