Kevin Siers

Kevin Siers (pronounced Sires) is an American editorial cartoonist for The Charlotte Observer and is syndicated by King Features. He was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

He was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for "his thought-provoking cartoons drawn with a sharp wit and bold artistic style." Siers was the third cartoonist from The Observer to win the Pulitzer, for "thought-provoking cartoons drawn with a sharp wit and bold artistic style."

Though Siers describes himself as "very liberal", The Washington Post said in 2014 about half his cartoons attacked Barack Obama and half lampooned conservatives. He is the only local cartoonist in the Carolinas producing daily cartoons. His work is syndicated by Cagle Cartoons.

Using money from his mining job, he attended the University of Minnesota as a biology major on a part-time basis, and joined the staff of campus newspaper Minnesota Daily as editorial cartoonist. While there, he became acquainted with Steve Sack (who won a Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning the year before Siers), who became Siers' mentor. In 1987 he began drawing for The Charlotte Observer as an editorial cartoonist. He was further mentored there by Doug Marlette, the primary editorial cartoonist at the Observer at the time.

Siers was born in Minnesota around 1954. His father was a mechanic who worked in ore mines. Before he could spell, Siers would draw cartoons, then add speech balloons to the drawings in which he would scribble gibberish. In elementary school, a fifth-grade teacher recognized his talent for drawing and encouraged him to create a comic book. Teachers at his high school continued to encourage his development. Initially, his drawings were copied from the style of popular comic strips, including most importantly the daily strips Dick Tracy, Lil' Abner and Pogo, and then later from the style of Marvel Comics. He was working as an iron ore miner in Minnesota when he began to draw editorial cartoons during a layoff.