Melissa Broder (born August 29, 1979) is an American author, essayist and poet. Her work includes the novels The Pisces (Penguin Random House 2018),[1]Milk Fed (Simon and Schuster 2021),[2] and Death Valley (Scribner, 2023);[3] the poetry collection Last Sext (Tin House 2016);[4] and the essay collection So Sad Today (Grand Central 2016),[5] as well as the Twitter feed also titled So Sad Today, on which the book is based.[6] Broder has written for The New York Times, Elle, Vice, Vogue Italia, and New York magazine‘s The Cut.[7]
Early life
Broder grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, with her younger sister Hayley. Her father, Bob, was a tax lawyer and her mother owned a stationery store. She attended the Baldwin School and became interested in poetry early, writing her first collection in third grade.[5]
Broder attended Tufts University, where she edited the literary magazine Queen's Head and Artichoke. She graduated in 2001 with a degree in English and then moved to San Francisco, where she worked odd jobs before relocating to New York City at 25. There she worked as a publicist for Penguin Books and attended night classes at City College of New York, earning an MFA in poetry.[5]
Broder has published five collections of poetry,[9] including Superdoom[10] (2021). She won a Pushcart Prize for the poem "Forgotten Sound",[11] included in her collection Last Sext.
Twitter
Broder began tweeting anonymously from her So Sad Today Twitter account in 2012.[8] She began her So Sad Today column for Vice in December 2014.[5]
She revealed herself as the account's author in a Rolling Stone interview in May 2015.[12]
As of February 2021, the So Sad Today profile had more than 1 million followers.[13]
So Sad Today
In 2016, Broder published a collection of personal essays, So Sad Today, based on her Twitter account.[14] The collection includes some essays initially published in Vice under her So Sad Today pen name.[5]
She also writes the Beauty and Death column for Elle. In 2020 it was announced that a television show based on her novel Milk Fed was being developed. No news has emerged since then.[18]
Broder records a podcast titled eating alone in my car in which she openly discusses her work, daily life, obsessions, and "rants about everything from mortality to Poptarts to depression".[19] She has recorded near-weekly episodes of the podcast since May 2018.
Personal life
Broder is married and lives in Los Angeles.[20] She is a caregiver for her husband, who has a progressive neuroimmune disease that leaves him bedridden for months at a time.[21] She is bisexual.[22]
Bibliography
Poetry
When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother (Ampersand Books, 2010)[23]
^Henderson, Bill; Pushcart Press (January 1, 2017). "Pushcart prize XLI, 2017: best of the small presses". The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. ISSN0149-7863. OCLC961956305.