Pat Byrnes received an undergraduate degree in Aerospace at the University of Notre Dame in 1981. He joined General Dynamics-Convair as the first pre-design engineer they had ever taken directly out of college. After he left that job, he wrote ad copy for agencies like W. B. Doner in Detroit and J. Walter Thompson in Chicago. He won numerous awards for his work including the Addy and the Clio. In 1991, he left copywriting for voiceover acting and started drawing cartoons. Since 1998, he has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker. His cartoons also appear in Reader's Digest, Wall Street Journal and America Magazine. For three years, he created the syndicated comic strip, Monkeyhouse.… In 2002, he won the National Cartoonists Society Award for advertising illustration. His gag cartoons appeared in book form in What Would Satan Do? and Because I'm the Child Here and I Said So.