Anna Konkle

“There’s not the semi-autobiographical-ness to hide behind. It’s definitely more brutal and raw.”

The co-creator of Pen15 isn’t done thinking about childhood—only this time she’s sticking to her own in a brutal yet funny coming-of-age memoir

By Carolina de Armas

On the first page of her debut memoir, The Sane One, Anna Konkle is pacing her apartment. The doorbell keeps ringing. Though she knows who it is, she hesitates. “On the other side is a man who has my same hair, cheeks, and nose, and who I haven’t seen for five years,” she writes. What follows is an excavation of her estrangement from her father, its roots reaching back to when she was six years old.

Best known for co-creating the Hulu original series Pen15 —pronounced “pen-fifteen,” though styled, with tween humor, to read as “penis”—Konkle has a knack READ ON