2024 Bombeck Workshop Faculty Bob Eckstein and Mark Shatz

Bob Eckstein is an award-winning writer, New Yorker cartoonist and author of The New York Times bestseller Footnotes From the World’s Greatest Bookstores.

He is the editor of the series The Ultimate Cartoon Book by the World’s Greatest Cartoonists, a contributing editor at Writer’s Digest and teaches at New York University.

His cartoons have appeared in Barron’s, Mad, McSweeney’s, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Oldie, Playboy, Private Eye, Prospect, Reader’s Digest, Spy, The Spectator and The Wall Street Journal.

He’s been nominated twice for the National Cartoonist Society’s Gag Cartoonist of the Year.

His work has been exhibited in the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco, the Smithsonian Institution, the Cartoon Museum of London and the Sordoni Art Gallery at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, and he regularly speaks at writers’ conferences and festivals.

Mark Shatz is the author of a top-selling humor writing book, Comedy Writing Secrets, which is now in its third edition.

As an award-winning professor of psychology at Ohio University Zanesville, he teaches humor writing and researches the benefits of humor.

He is a popular public speaker with extensive experience working with writers, including multiple presentations at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop and the Writer’s Digest annual conference.