Allie Brosh is an American blogger, writer and comic artist mostly known for her webcomic Hyperbole and a Half.
Early life
As a child, Brosh used to write stories and had notebooks filled with them: "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." She wanted to be a writer when she was eight. Brosh was raised in Auburn, California; then near Sandpoint, Idaho, which she says let her "be a little bit weirder". As they lived far from town, her mother gave her pens and paper so Brosh could entertain herself, and she used to draw even before writing. She graduated in human biological sciences from the University of Montana in 2009, where she also participated in track. Brosh said she has ADHD, which was worse when she was a child.
''Hyperbole and a Half'' (2009–2013)
Brosh started her blog Hyperbole and a Half in 2009. She has said she started it to avoid her college physics final, and wondered if people would like her work. She realised her work was getting popular when someone posted it on Reddit and she found her blog getting the most visits she had ever had. Meant to be humorous, it dealt with various aspects of her personal life, including her antics as a child, speculation about her character flaws, a grammatical pet peeve, and her life with her two dogs. In May 2011, she posted that she had signed a book deal. Some parts of her posts became Internet memes. Brosh also posted several Youtube videos, some of them being animated versions of her typical art style while the others are recordings of herself. In October 2011 Brosh revealed on Reddit and in a blog post that she had depression, and she was inactive online for more than a year. In May 2013, she made a long follow-up post chronicling her struggle and thoughts of suicide. In the same year, she had over 380,000 Facebook likes and around 72 million website views. Her site got 1.5 million visits in a day, and the number of supportive comments from people indicating that they were worried about her surprised Brosh. Her two posts about her struggle with depression with its dark humour are her most popular works. Brosh said seeing how people related to her work helped her: "Depression can be such an isolating experience, and it's deceptive, you know, you think, 'Surely I'm the only one that's ever gone through this, or felt this depth of misery.'" In 2011, her blog was included in a list of the funniest sites by PC World and in 2013, Advertising Age put Brosh in its yearly list of "most influential and creative thinkers and doers". Besides becoming popular with people who had depression and could identify with her description, her work was praised by critics and psychologists who appreciated her depiction of the illness; furthermore, people who had never experienced depression said they understood it better. Linda Holmes, from NPR, praised her work, saying "Brosh's posts are hugely evocative, gut-bustingly funny, and startlingly inventive in using simple drawings in ways that allow for pauses and comic timing" and compared her method of depicting "giddiness and anger" to Bill Watterson. Jonathan Rottenberg, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida, in Psychology Today, said, "I know of no better depiction of the guts of what it’s like to be severely depressed." Brosh intentionally makes her comics appear crudely drawn and says she spends time perfecting the figures since her characters are mostly from her imagination. She sometimes spends hours on the characters' facial expressions or body positions, making multiple drafts. She uses the Paintbrush software for drawing her comic. The character representing Brosh loosely resembles a stick-figure with a pink dress, wide-grinning, unfocused eyes and a triangle-shaped up-sticking ponytail—which she jokingly calls a shark fin.
Book and later activity (2009–present)
Her book Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened is based on her comic blog. It was published by Touchstone, an imprint of CBS’s Simon & Schuster, and released in October 2013. Brosh had undergone a major surgery due to having stage IV endometriosis; this caused a delay in her book's release. Brosh went for a six-city tour for the release, arranged by the publisher. She made appearances on radio and television and got support from fellow authors, including Elizabeth Gilbert. Brosh used social media to help with publicity, revealing the cover on Facebook and Twitter and participating in a marathon "ask-me-anything" session on Reddit before the book's publication. The book's style resembles that of her blog, with text-annotated drawings, and also provides new content in the form of further commentary and narrative. Brosh compares her combination of text and illustrations to stand-up comedy: "It 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." Hyperbole and a Half sold more than 350,000 copies in one month. It was the American Booksellers Association’s No. 1 pick for November and in The New York Timesbest sellers list. Zosia Bielskib from The Globe and Mail said "Brosh brings levity to many trademarks of depression, from emotional numbness to suicidal thoughts to paralysis around simple life tasks such as returning a DVD," and further called her an "unlikely poster girl for depression". Bill Gates, in his blog, praised her book and said, "While she self-deprecatingly depicts herself in words and art as an odd outsider, we can all relate to her struggles. Rather than laughing at her, you laugh with her. It is no hyperbole to say I love her approach—looking, listening, and describing with the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian." Brosh's online presence became sporadic again, with a single tweet in November 2014. The next year, in August, she announced that she was working on a new book, a sequel called Solutions and Other Problems. This was slated for release in 2016 and available for pre-order on Amazon, but release was postponed a number of times and the book was eventually marked "unavailable" on Amazon. In June 2020, the book reappeared on Simon & Schuster's website with a new cover and updated page number and description. It is scheduled for release on September 22, 2020 under their Gallery Books imprint. Brosh has made a few public appearances, appearing on WTF with Marc Maron in November 2014. She was on an episode of YouTube series Tabletop in July 2015 and in the same month she appeared at Comic-Con on a panel with Felicia Day, discussing the writing of Hyperbole and a Half and its sequel. Brosh gave a talk in 2016 at JoCo Cruise, an annual gathering of artists and tech experts.
Personal life
Regarding her finding her career, she said, “With my crippling ADHD and impulsive decisions this is a perfect job for me. I make my own schedule.", Brosh lived in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, Duncan, whom she married in December 2012. They were together around eight years before that. As of June 2020, she was remarried, and back in Bend after living in multiple states. Brosh is a fan of and calls herself "a huge dork". Besides having her pet dogs, she also has a number of pet rats. Brosh's younger sister Kaitlin, who had bipolar disorder, died in 2013. Brosh referred to her sister's death as a suicide. Brosh has been active on Reddit and likes it because it was the place where her first posts got popular. She says she tends to be a recluse and her work as a writer tends to encourage this behavior. With her history of having long periods of being inactive online, her fans have shown concern and speculate about her health. On this, she said, "I have been trying to make myself be more responsible. There’s a part of me that wishes that I could sort of disappear and fade back into the mists when I need to. But I know that’s not how reality works. I’m trying not to disappear for quite so long, or as completely".
