Writer-Artist: Lawrence Lariar
Preferring anonymity as an author, Lawrence Lariar edited and authored dozens of books including mystery novels under, among others, the pseudonyms Adam Knight, Michael Stark, and Michael Lawrence, and was a popular cartoonist in his day–over the years turning out gag cartoons, spot drawings, comic strips, and political cartoons for Colliers, Young American Magazine, and the New York Journal-American—and for twenty years was cartoon editor of Parade Magazine.
Charles Johnson, National Book Award winner and cartoonist credits Lariar telling him as a boy that Johnson’s father was wrong to tell him that he couldn’t be a cartoonist because he was black, that he could be anything he wanted.
Although Lariar didn’t make it into The Writer’s Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers, more than 200 great writers did, along with more than 400 plates of their artwork and the stories behind them.