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 an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In 2019, she received the "Genius grant" from the MacArthurs Fellows program.

In addition to What It Is, Barry has written four bestselling and acclaimed creative how-to graphic novels, What It Is; Picture This; Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor; and Making Comics. Her seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek, features Marlys, Maybonne, and Freddie and was collected into The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, The Freddie Stories, Come Over Come Over, My Perfect Life, and It's So Magic. Her other books include One! Hundred! Demons!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, and The Good Times are Killing Me.

"The collages in legendary cartoonist Lynda Barry's What It Is are a bathysphere-like odyssey through the depths of her funky subconscious." --Vanity Fair

"What It Is is equal parts cartoon memoir, collage album, scrapbook, and Zen roadmap. Written and drawn in a chaotic but riveting style, it offers itself as a guide to creative self-ignition." --The Boston Globe

"The magic of that moment and of all Barry's self-examinations is that her ideas apply to just about everybody." --Oprah