Meags Fitzgerald is a Canadian

drag king Drag kings have historically been mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of an individual or group routine. As documented in the 2003 ''Journal of Homosexuality,'' in more r ...

illustrator An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicate ...

and

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

Career

Fitzgerald earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the

Alberta College of Art and Design The Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts) is a public art university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that operates four academic schools. The institution originated from the art department ...

in Calgary in 2009 and a certificate in design from

NSCAD University NSCAD University, also known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), is a public art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The unive ...

in Halifax in 2012. She worked mainly as an illustrator, graphic novelist and comedic improviser before becoming a drag king. Fitzgerald published ''Photobooth: A Biography'' in 2014, a non-fiction graphic novel detailing her interest in chemical photobooths. The book won the 2015 Doug Wright Spotlight Award. She followed it in 2015 with the autobiographical graphic novel ''Long Red Hair''. In 2019, she was nominated for the

Prism Prize The Prism Prize is a national juried award recognizing the artistry of the modern music video in Canada.Rich Aucoin Richard Aucoin (born September 15, 1983) is a Canadian musician, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

's song The Middle. Fitzgerald's

pseudonym is HercuSleaze (pronouns he/him). He was a contestant on the first season of the reality TV competition

Call Me Mother ''Call Me Mother'' is a Canadian reality television series, which premiered on OutTV (Canada), OutTV in 2021. Hosted by ''Entertainment Tonight Canada'' reporter Dallas Dixon, the series is a drag (clothing), drag competition which will see up-a ...

. In 2022 HercuSleaze performed at

Fierté Montréal Fierté Montréal, also called Montreal Pride, is an annual LGBT pride festival in Montreal, Quebec. The event was founded in 2007 at the initiative of Montreal’s LGBTQ+ communities after the city's prior Pride festival, Divers/Cité, reposi ...

's Superstars show to a crowd of 30,000 people, making him one of the first drag kings to perform to an audience of this size. Fitzgerald identifies as

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

Bibliography

* ''Photobooth: A Biography'' (2014) * ''Long Red Hair'' (2015)

References

External links

*
HercuSleaze
on

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Doug Wright Award winners Canadian graphic novelists Canadian LGBTQ novelists LGBTQ comics creators Canadian women artists Canadian queer artists Canadian queer writers Canadian queer women Canadian female comics artists Canadian female comics writers Canadian music video directors Canadian drag kings Canadian illustrators Canadian women illustrators 21st-century Canadian LGBTQ people 21st-century Canadian artists 21st-century Canadian writers Drag performers from Edmonton Writers from Edmonton Artists from Edmonton Call Me Mother contestants Novelists from Alberta {{Cartoonist-stub