Will McPhail is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Scotland. He has illustrated for the magazines The New Yorker and Private Eye,[1] as well as The New Statesman.[2]
McPhail was born in 1988 in Lancashire, England, to mother Jane McPhail. He grew up in Chorley in Lancashire. He studied zoology at, and graduated from, the University of Glasgow.[2]
His work was published in Private Eye for the first time while he was still attending university.[1] In 2013, he won the Young Cartoonist of the Year Award,[3] given by the London Cartoon Museum. In 2014, his work began to be published in The New Yorker.[2]
In 2021, McPhail's debut graphic novel, In, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The fictional story focuses on a professional illustrator named Nick Moss.[4] In 2022, the book won the Betty Trask Prize from the Society of Authors; it was the first graphic novel to win the award.[5] That year, McPhail received the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award for In.[6]
In 2022, a book of McPhail's cartoons was published, titled Love & Vermin.[7]