About — Hallie Bateman

Hallie Bateman at her desk, surrounded by pens, brushes and a sketchbook

Short Bio (third person, as if I didn’t write it)

Hallie Bateman is a writer, illustrator and author of five books, including the bestselling What To Do When I’m Gone. Her writing and art have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Cup of Jo and many others. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband, their twins, and Spinelli the dog. Her newsletter HALMAIL goes out to thousands of subscribers most weeks, and is the best way to keep up with her work.

Longer Bio (first person, as if I wrote it, which I did)

My name is Hallie Bateman. I sometimes call myself an “illustwriter” because I write with words and images in combination. My books include What To Do When I’m Gone, Directions, Eggasaurus, and What To Do When You Get Dumped. My work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Cup of Jo, and many others.

I grew up on a mountain in rural Northern California. From a young age, I was drawn to the ethos of what my journalist parents did: taking notes. I documented life on our farm, photographing each of our many animals. I eavesdropped on my brothers from the next room, crouching in the stairwell, writing down every word they said in a notebook marked PRIVET. I made movies and drew comics. I published a fictional newspaper about our pets and brought it to school to hand out. (Can you believe I was not popular??)

This frenetic artmaking continued through high school, but I never saw it as anything more than a form of play. Then, in my junior year of college, where I majored in creative writing, I took an art class simply to fulfill a requirement. There, I picked up a nib pen for the first time. Something about drawing with that sharp, inky edge made me see my work with new eyes. When the art teacher strolled by and said, “That looks like it could be in The New Yorker,” I felt seen. I started to draw more, submitting illustrations with my poetry assignments, inking flyers for the college radio station and drawing comics for the school newspaper.

Writing, thus far, had proven to be a lonely experience. But when I combined art and writing, people responded to my humor and sensibility right away. They’d laugh or say “Me too!” or tell me that they’d been moved by my work. I learned that images and words together have a power that each alone lacks. As I became fluent in this new language, I found a way to connect deeply with others and myself. I found my purpose, and never looked back.

When I pick up a pen or paintbrush or crayon, I play like I did as a kid, or grapple with my own burning questions. Either way, I collaborate with some magical force bigger than myself. Making art requires me not just to look, but to see, interpret, translate.

I make art to shake myself alive.

I hope my work shakes you alive, too. I want you to see my imperfect drawings and think, hmm, I should draw more! I want my work to help you sense your smallness in the universe in a way that’s deeply freeing. I want to help you laugh at the absurdity of everything.

I’m here to tug sleeves and point at the moon. To ask you to fathom the miracle of your own existence, and the miracle of our paths ever crossing.

What’s Not on This Website

I graduated with a degree in creative writing from the University of Puget Sound in 2011.
Between the years of 2014-2019 I published so, so, so many comics, graphic essays and pieces of humorous writing all around the internet. If you want to see the work I’ve done for those publications, like The New Yorker, The New York Times, Buzzfeed*, etc. you can google and find it! I’m very proud of my large body of freelance work, but at this point it feels like a lifetime ago and I’ve chosen to devote this website to my books.
From 2014-2016ish, I had a weekly graphic column for The Awl. It was incredible, and they let me do whatever I wanted. I really found my voice and my audience there and I'll always be so thankful for that opportunity. Sadly they, like so many other great indie blogs, aren't around anymore.
One of the most widespread and viral pieces of art I’ve ever made is a drawing called It’s A Miracle We Ever Met. I drew it in my Brooklyn apartment in 2015, when I was 25 years old. You can buy a print of it here.
In 2016 I illustrated Julia Edelman's humor book Love Voltaire Us Apart and in 2017 I illustrated Dr. James Hamblin's If Our Bodies Could Talk.
In 2017 I published my first book, a creative journal for the Museum of Modern Art called Brave New Work. It was full of creative prompts, collaborative drawings and references to famous pieces in MoMA's collection. Sadly, it’s out of print.
I have 8 years of experience as an art director, two years in a newsroom setting, art directing for a tech blog called Pandodaily, and six years illustrating and art directing for a now-defunct mental health app built by the psychiatry department at UC San Francisco. I am good at it, and if you want me to art direct for you, I totally would.
In 2022, I launched an online shop called HALMART. I’d spent a year of my life and a huge amount of time and energy building it, but I ended up closing it after running it for about a year. I realized I really didn’t like running a shop and selling stuff all the time – I just wanted to keep making art. The HALMART website was designed by the same person who built this website, Jesse Vaughan, and it’s so beautiful and fun. You can see it here. I also made two infomercials, which you can see here and here. They’re so ridiculous and I love them. Also, I talked a bit about my journey with HALMART in this interview. My favorite product I made for HALMART was The NOW Clock.
I've made movies since I was a kid and for a long time I felt pressure to pursue it more seriously as an adult. I directed a music video and collaborated on a webseries. I wrote a feature-length screenplay with my brother Nick called Air Blood – an Air Bud sequel imagined as a violent revenge movie. I'd write a short film and bribe reluctant friends to be in it, and then never edit the footage because I couldn't get it off my camera. I enjoyed making movies when it worked, but most of the time the process always felt so hamstrung by technical difficulties and lack of resources and collaborators. Anyway, eventually I realized with great relief that working on paper and making books is my destiny and my gift and making comics is essentially directing your own movies without the need for a large budget or input from anyone else. Hooray!
I've drawn at live events many times. From drawing portraits at parties to drawing many famous dogs for PETCO to drawing onstage at Radio City Music Hall while renowned authors gave readings of their work. I'd be happy to do more live drawing!
I said in the longer bio that I “never looked back” after I found my purpose. This feels true overall, but of course I’ve been filled with doubt countless times throughout my career. I have had so many moments where I thought, my god, this is so hard, do I need to quit and become a massage therapist? Do I need to move back in with my mom? But then those moments pass, and generally I just get back to work.
I have shouted this from the rooftops and will continue to: A.I. will never be able to make real art. Art is inherently human. To use A.I. to make “art” is to rob yourself of a fundamentally human experience, of joy and catharsis, of truly knowing yourself. Not to mention the catastrophic effect its usage has already had on creative industries.