Matt Groening

Matt Groening is a writer, cartoonist, animator, producer and director. He attended Evergreen State College, and was editor of the campus newspaper where he published some of his earlier cartoon work which became his well-known comic strip Life in Hell. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s and worked as an editor, writer, and cartoonist. In 1987 he was hired to produce a series of animated shorts for the sketch comedy series The Tracy Ullman Show, which he based upon his family and life growing up in the Pacific Northwest. The Simpsons, set in the fictional Northwest town of Springfield, became so popular it was spun off as a separate series starting in 1989. has won numerous Emmy Awards and other honors. Groening has gone on to create and produce a number of other popular and critically acclaimed animated series and founded two comic book publishing companies.