From her first comics published in the Evergreen State College school paper to her influential weekly comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek, books, novels, graphic memoirs and plays, Lynda Barry has been part of the North American alternative comics scene for thirty years. In her first book, What It Is: The Formless Thing Which Gives Things Form, Lynda Barry singlehandedly created a literary genre all her own: the graphic-memoir-how-to. West Lafayette Public Library Director Nick Schenkel has a review.