The Cartoonist Behind a Broadway Hit: Alison Bechdel

Human Success Stories · Jul 15, 2026 · 47m

Alison Bechdel grew up in a small Pennsylvania town in a house that doubled as her family's funeral home, raised by a father who was an English teacher and a closeted gay man keeping secrets that would eventually consume him. She processed that world through drawing and writing, culminating in three landmark graphic memoirs, including Fun Home, which was later adapted into a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

She's also credited with the Bechdel Test — a simple measure of whether a film gives its female characters real depth — which started as a joke in one of her comic strips and went on…