About Angela

Angela Nissel is the author of two books: the national best-selling comedic memoir The Broke Diaries and the shitty-selling but critically-acclaimed (please buy it… hell, I’ll buy it for you)  Mixed.  For real, Publishers Weekly, called it “one of the best books of the year.” You should buy it. Okay, enough begging.  This is a bio.

In addition to books, for over 16 years, Angela has been one of the few Black women in half-hour comedy writing rooms.  What has she done recently?  As of 2018, she is co-executive producer / writer on The Last O.G. (2nd Season). Before that, she was writer / producer for Tyler the Creator’s The Jellies, Scrubs, Til Death, The Boondocks…and numerous shows that never made it on the air.

Angela was born a lower-middle class light-brown child in Philadelphia. She even stayed in that fair city for college, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical anthropology degree. That expensive-ass Ivy League degree led to a series of broke ass jobs: IRS temp, a “melter” in a metalworking shop, and as a “sleep apnea auditor” working graveyard at a local hospital.

After analyzing the snores and hacking spit of  sleeping people, she co-founded a dotcom, OkayPlayer.com with her friend Questlove of The Roots.  She met Quest while they both worked at a telemarketing job (her to pay private high school tuition. Him? To pay for his first demo.)  The site is still very alive and well but she left it permanently to the care of its co-founder after The Broke Diaries was published. She decided to pursue writing full-time and finally ventured out of Philadelphia to Hollywood.

Upon arriving in Hollywood, she learned that just because someone’s vanity plates read “PRDCR”, doesn’t mean he has the connections to make your book into a screenplay or even help you get a writing job. And she was still broke for several years as she wrote her first few spec scripts.

Barely paying her rent, she put a few possessions on Ebay for extra cash—the winning bidder of one item was a television executive who had read The Broke Diaries.  She introduced Angela and some of Angela’s specs to a television literary agent.  Soon, the broke girl had numerous job offers and landed on Scrubs –  the only job she’s had where her medical anthropology degree came in handy.

When she’s not writing, Angela is hoping her mother is putting in a good word for her in heaven, looking for the perfect wide width shoe, or trying to raise funds for the deserving dope kids of The Unusual Suspects, where she currently serves as a board member.

She also wrote this in the third person to make it seem like she has a web person. You can find her on twitter @angelanissel to tell her about any typos.  Because, I… I mean SHE always has typos.

Love! ❤️