Discover the Best Books Written by Allie Brosh

Allie Brosh is an American blogger, writer, and comic artist best known for her blog in the form of a webcomic Hyperbole and a Half. Brosh grew up in small towns across the U.S. before attending the University of Montana. While there, Brosh started Hyperbole and a Half in 2009, in which she told stories from her life in a mix of text and intentionally crude illustrations. She has published two books telling stories in the same style, both of which have been New York Times bestsellers.

Brosh lives with severe depression and ADHD, and her comics on depression have won praise from fans and mental health professionals. Her depression led her to withdraw from the internet and her blog for several years. Brosh was raised in small towns, first in Auburn, California, then near Sandpoint, Idaho, which she says let her "be a little bit weirder." Brosh wanted to be an author from age eight and described writing a book at age nine or ten, saying, "It was this epic monstrosity that filled three whole notebooks... the main plot was that there was a guy, and he fought lots of things. Anything I could think of – this guy fought it."

She graduated in human biology from the University of Montana, where she also participated in track. Brosh has ADHD, which she says was more severe when she was a child. Brosh started Hyperbole and a Half in 2009 to avoid studying for her college physics final exam. She used Paintbrush software to draw the comic. When the blog was fully active, Brosh would upload a new entry every few weeks. In 2010, she said of her career as a writer, “With my crippling ADHD and impulsive decisions, this is a perfect job for me. I make my own schedule."

Hyperbole and a Half has been described both as a blog and as a webcomic. Each post is a mix of text and illustrations describing her life, including childhood stories or general thoughts, such as her grammatical pet peeve of "a lot" being written as "a lot." Brosh compared her combination of text and illustrations to stand-up comedy, saying, "[my writing] was more one-dimensional than stand-up comedy, in which you can rely on tone and facial expressions, body posture. And I wanted to find some way to commit that to the page. Drawing fixed all of those problems."

The drawings, mainly stick figures which draw inspiration from rage comics, intentionally appear crude. Brosh scrutinized and refined her drawings, often doing 10 or more of each illustration, spending hours on facial expressions or body positions. Brosh said that each blog entry took around 24 hours to produce. The character representing Brosh loosely resembles a stick figure with a pink dress, with wide-grinning, unfocused eyes and a triangle-shaped ponytail sticking up, which she jokingly calls a shark fin. 

The character sometimes wears a grey hoodie when particularly depressed. Brosh said in an interview, "I feel very awkward a lot, and so I want to represent myself with this awkward thing, this thing that doesn't quite look like a person. Maybe it looks like some sort of bug or some sort of alien because that's how I feel."