Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found that they are very much alike. She lives in Wisconsin, where she is assistant professor of art and Discovery Fellow at University of Wisconsin Madison. 

Barry is a strong advocate of the 'anyone can draw' school of thinking & the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip that was syndicated across North America in alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook's Comeek, featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. She is the author of The Freddie Stories, One! Hundred! Demons!, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!, and The Good Times are Killing Me, which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governor's Award. She is also responsible for coining the term 'autobiofictional.' 

She has written two bestselling and acclaimed creative how-to graphic novels for Drawn & Quarterly (based upon her class 'Writing the unthinkable'), What It Is which won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author; and Picture This. Barry was born in Wisconsin in 1956.