Clay Bennett

Who is Clay Bennett?

Clay Bennett is an American editorial cartoonist. Currently drawing for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Bennett is the winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

Graduating from the University of North Alabama in 1980, Bennett briefly served as a staff artist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Fayetteville Times. He worked as editorial cartoonist at the St. Petersburg Times for 13 years but was fired in 1994. While Bennett's editor Phil Gailey denied the firing was politically motivated, many observers saw it as part of the traditionally liberal newspaper's trend towards becoming more conservative. Bennett said "Many saw the termination as political because I was out there on the far left. Obviously expressing your point of view can cost you your job." He later worked for The Christian Science Monitor and now draws five cartoons a week for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, having joined its staff in 2007.

Bennett is the recipient of the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the National Journalism Award, the National Cartoonist Society Award for Editorial Cartoons, the Robert F.