Allie Brosh

Brosh was raised in small towns—first in Auburn, California, then near Sandpoint, Idaho—which she says let her "be a little bit weirder".[2] Brosh wanted to be an author from age eight,[2] and described writing a book at age nine or ten, saying, "It was this epic monstrosity that filled three whole notebooks."[1]

She graduated in human biology from the University of Montana[3] in 2009, where she also participated in track.[4] Brosh has ADHD, which she says was more severe when she was a child.[5]

Brosh started Hyperbole and a Half in 2009 to avoid studying for her college physics final exam.[1] She uses Paintbrush software to draw the comic.[1][6] When the blog was fully active, Brosh would upload a new entry every few weeks.[1] 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."[3]

Hyperbole and a Half has been described both as a blog[1][2][3] and as a webcomic.[7][8][9] 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 "alot".[7][1][6][10] 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."[6]

The drawings, mainly stick figures which draw inspiration from rage comics,[11] intentionally appear crude.[2] Brosh scrutinizes and refines her drawings,[2] often doing 10 or more of each illustration, spending hours on facial expressions or body positions.[8] Brosh said that each blog entry took around 24 hours to produce.[3] 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.[8] The character sometimes wears a grey hoodie when particularly depressed.[8] Brosh said in a 2020 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."[12]

In October 2011, Brosh made a blog post entitled "Adventures in Depression" in which she revealed that she had severe depression.[8][14] After that post, Brosh's blog was inactive for more than a year. In May 2013, she made a long follow-up post chronicling her struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide.[10] 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 her.[1] The two posts from 2011 and 2013 are her most popular.

The two comics on depression became popular with people who could identify with her depiction of the mental disorder, and people who had never experienced depression said they understood it better. Her work was praised by critics and psychologists who appreciated her depiction of the illness.[8] 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."[15] 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.'"[16]

According to The Globe and Mail, the success of the 2011 post "rocketed Brosh to serious virality, landing her a book deal."[8]

Brosh's first book, titled Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, was released in October 2013. It is written in the same style as her blog and includes some posts from the blog along with new stories.[1][16] It was published by Touchstone, an imprint of CBS’s Simon & Schuster.[1] The book's release was delayed as Brosh underwent major surgery for stage IV endometriosis.[1] Brosh went on 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. Before the book's publication, Brosh revealed its cover on Facebook and Twitter and participated in a marathon "ask-me-anything" session on Reddit.[17]

Hyperbole and a Half sold more than 350,000 copies in one month.[17] It was on The New York Times Best Seller list (Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous) for 12 weeks[18][19] and on the NPR Paperback Nonfiction Bestseller List for 31 weeks.[20] The book was the American Booksellers Association’s No. 1 pick for November,[17] and it won a Goodreads Choice Award in the Humor category.[21]

After the first book's release, Brosh's online presence became sporadic again, and after a tweet in November 2014 disappeared again from social media.[11] Brosh made a few public appearances; she appeared on WTF with Marc Maron in November 2014,[22] on an episode of YouTube series Tabletop[11] and on a Comic-Con panel in June 2015,[23] and she gave a talk in 2016 on the JoCo Cruise.[11]

In August 2015 she announced that she was working on a new book called Solutions and Other Problems.[11] The release date was postponed a number of times, and by 2018 it was marked "unavailable" on Amazon.[24] In June 2020, the book reappeared on Simon & Schuster's website with a new cover and updated page count and description.[25] In September 2020, Brosh publicly announced the book with a new post on her blog.[26] Solutions and Other Problems was released on September 22, 2020.[12] It became a New York Times Bestseller (Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous), and as of November 1, 2020 it had been on the list for four weeks.[27] Ailsa Chang of NPR said that what was most striking about the work is that Brosh ricochets between zany moments and sad moments within pages, and a key theme of the book is showing compassion to yourself.[12]

As of 2013, Brosh lived in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, Duncan. She had married Duncan in December 2012, having been together for around eight years before that.[1] In a post on Reddit in June 2020, Brosh said that since then she had divorced, then remarried, and that after moving around multiple states was living in Bend again.[28] Brosh's younger sister Kaitlin, who had bipolar disorder, died in 2013. Brosh referred to her sister's death as a suicide.[22][12] Brosh underwent major surgery for stage IV endometriosis in 2013.[1]

Brosh has said that she "lives like a recluse"[6] and her work as a writer tends to encourage this behavior. Brosh has been active on Reddit and has said that she likes it because it was the place where her first posts got popular. 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".[2]

• Alexandra Brosh (October 31, 2013). Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4464-9652-7.

• Hyperbole and a Half blog
• Allie Brosh on Twitter
• Allie Brosh's channel on YouTube