About the Artist

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From the swampy miasma of the Crescent City an ancient beast arises. Its serpentine path weaves across the continent, a long black tail trailing to Los Angeles, to Boston, to Seattle, and back to the swamps from whence she sprang – ah, there she is, in all her lazy glory: Peggy.


I was born and raised in New Orleans, a place I’m still somewhat allergic to.

I grew up absorbed in books, especially science fiction and fantasy. And cartoons. And videogames and computers, once they came along. And, of course, drawing.

My life was rather monotonous.

College involved an attempt at a computer science degree that went nowhere. The month I turned 25, I moved to California to attend animation school.

Life continued to be somewhat unexciting. Even when I ended up living my dream of working at Spümcø and learning from the master cartoonists there.

In 2002, after several years of blurring gender online, I finally came out to myself as a male-to-female transsexual. Acknowledging that fact, and dealing with it, has made me a much happier person.

Later, I moved to Sunnyvale. A year later, I moved back to New Orleans… three days before Hurricane Katrina hit the place.

After five years freezing my ass off in Boston, and seven years in Seattle, I’m in New Orleans again. Occasionally things are exciting. But mostly I just hang out in cafes and the park and draw stuff. It’s pleasantly boring.

Shockingly enough, “Egypt Urnash” bears no resemblance to the name I was born with, nor to the one I sign on checks. The latter? Margaret Trauth.

Bibliography

Five Glasses of Absinthe: Wormwood on Five Rounds a Day. Lulu, 2009.

The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn. Lo Scarabeo, 2011.

Decrypting Rita: An exchange of secrets with oblivious transfer. Collapsar Press, 2012.

Decrypting Rita: Imperfect forward secrecy. Collapsar Press, 2014.