Sad Monsters

Frank Lesser has been fascinated by monsters since he was a child growing up in a very non-monstrous suburb of Columbus, Ohio (though Goosebumps author R. L. Stine once lived just down the street, so maybe it wasn’t entirely ordinary). As a kid, he dreamed of spotting Bigfoot delivering the mail or snapping a photo of Nessie in the local pool. Most people grow out of these fantasies, but as a writer, he got to imagine them for a living. One day he discovered something more remarkable than a mermaid: how to make people laugh. So he moved to New York and wrote Emmy-winning late-night comedy for The Colbert Report. He later returned to his love of monsters, creating Sad Monsters: Growling on the Outside, Crying on the Inside and the animated series You’re Not a Monster, and even spending time with Bigfoot-hunters in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. These days, he can often be found in a Brooklyn coffee shop, searching for the magic words to bring a golem to life—or at least make a reader laugh.