Ariel Schrag (born December 29, 1979) is an American cartoonist and television writer who achieved critical recognition at an early age for her autobiographical comics.

Her novel Adam provoked controversy with its theme of a heterosexual teenage boy becoming drawn into the LGBTQ community of New York.

[2] The comics describe Schrag's experiences with family life, going to concerts, drug-taking, high school crushes, and coming out as bisexual and later as lesbian.

It explores the then-23-year-old Schrag's world in which she "negotiates fame, obsesses about disease, and discusses the way she sees as a dyke comic book artist.

Schrag found the situation unusual and imagined Rapp going to gay bars pretending to be a transgender man to collect material for writing on the show.

[12] In an interview with Brooklyn, she stated she was "intrigued by the idea of taking a standard YA formula — awkward teen boy finds love for the first time — and subverting it with unexpected explicit and hopefully thought-provoking content about gender and sexuality.

[11] Speaking to Lambda Literary, she declared that the novel was intended to be provocative, for the purpose of sparking discussions about gender and sexual identity.

[14] She felt it was particularly important to write characters who acted realistically "obnoxious, self-involved, self-righteous, or entitled," regardless of their gender or sexuality.