Allie Brosh (born May 18, 1985)[1] is an American blogger, writer, and comic artist best known for Hyperbole and a Half, a blog and webcomic she created in 2009.

Brosh's comics chronicling her experiences with depression have won praise from mental health professionals, professors, and philanthropists.

In an interview with Mother Jones, she stated that these rural settings allowed her to "be a little bit weirder.”[5] When it comes to her writing, Brosh says that she wanted to be an author since she was at least eight years old, noting that her first real foray into book writing occurred when she was around nine or ten: "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.

[8] Brosh started Hyperbole and a Half in 2009 to avoid studying for her college physics final exam.

She later stated that this reduction was caused by her mental health issues, a serious medical condition, and pivoting to focus on her first book, which would be published in 2013.

[5] Brosh says that she scrutinizes and refines all of these crude drawings to ensure they convey the proper energy and emotions,[5] often doing 10 or more of each illustration and spending hours on facial expressions or body positions.

[6] 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.

"[15] Brosh first saw her work become popular when one of her posts was linked from Reddit and she found her blog getting "like 100 times more traffic than I'd ever had.

[11] 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.

"[18] 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.

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

"[12] 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.

Before the book's publication, Brosh revealed its cover on Facebook and Twitter and participated in a marathon "ask-me-anything" session on Reddit.

She appeared on WTF with Marc Maron in November 2014,[25] on an episode of YouTube series Tabletop,[14]on a Comic-Con panel in June 2015,[26] and she gave a talk in 2016 on the JoCo Cruise.

[27] In June 2020, the book reappeared on Simon & Schuster's website with a new cover and updated page count and description.

[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.