Sharon Murdoch

In 2017 Murdoch was inducted into the Massey University's College of Creative Arts' Hall of Fame.

In 2016, a 200 page book on Murdoch's work was published, which topped Unity Books' bestseller list

Murdoch was nominated for "Cartoonist of the Year" in the 2014 and 2015 Canon Media Awards, and won in 2016 and 2017, the first woman to receive this award. The awards were renamed the Voyager Media Awards, and Murdoch won again in 2018. Judges applauded her "fresh style and satirical intelligence" and described her as "gleeful and ingenious, and very funny, but she can shock us too"; one commented, "Sharon Murdoch's political cartoons satisfy the two golden rules of the art form. They make you laugh and are wickedly caricatured." Her cartoon The Alphabet for Needy Children was described as a "powerful comment on homelessness".

Murdoch began cartooning full-time in her early 50s, after being encouraged by former partner Trace Hodgson, a political cartoonist for the New Zealand Listener. Her first cartoons were of Munro the cat, appearing daily alongside the crossword in the Dominion Post, which continues to run in Fairfax newspapers; each one incorporates a clue from that day's crossword. She then began doing "political illustration" for the columnist Tracy Watkins; her first proper political cartoon appeared in the Waikato Times in August 2013. Her political work is published in the Sunday Star Times, where she was appointed political cartoonist in December 2014, the Christchurch Press, and occasionally the Dominion Post or the Waikato Times: usually cartoons but sometimes illustrations in collaboration with others, such as the feature Growing Up Kiwi: Sophie's Story.

Murdoch is the first woman to produce regular cartoons for a New Zealand newspaper. She signs her work "Murdoch", initially concerned that her work would be read differently if people knew she was female. "As a woman cartooning, I will inevitably see things differently to a man." The issues of most importance to her personally are social justice, animal welfare, and the environment. Her favourite politician to draw is Judith Collins: "She's so fantastic – what would we do without her?"

Murdoch studied graphic design at Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, and worked as a graphic designer for Wellington City Art Gallery, for the Legal Resources Trust, and with activist design group the Wellington Media Collective as its only female graphic designer. In 1999/2000 she did Volunteer Service Abroad in the township of Indinsane, South Africa, working with a Xhosa women’s community development group co-drawing comics on HIV/AIDS prevention and early childhood education. She continues to work as a designer and illustrator.

Sharon Murdoch is a cartoonist born in 1960 in Invercargill, New Zealand. She is the first woman to regularly produce political cartoons for New Zealand mainstream media, and draws the cartoon cat Munro who accompanies the daily crossword in Fairfax newspapers. Murdoch has won New Zealand Cartoonist of the Year three times: 2016, 2017 and 2018.