The Austrian comic artist, illustrator and online publisher Ulli Lust was born in 1967 in Vienna. She studied graphic design at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art.
Ulli Lust made her mark as a purveyor of »documentary comics«. She began amassing her collection of illustrated reportage, such as »Fashionvictims, Trendverächter« (2008; tr. Fashion victims, despisers of trends), by conducting journalistic research. »Berlin-Helmholtzplatz 1998 + 2004« (2004) is a long-term study of the Prenzlauer Berg square whose changes she has witnessed since moving there in 1997. She also creates comics that can be described as both erotic and mythological, such as »Airpussy« (2005), which recounts a prehistoric fertility rite in so-called »springpoems«. Ulli Lust worked for five years on her autobiographical comic epos »Heute ist der letzte Tag vom Rest deines Lebens« (2009; Eng. »Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life«, 2013). In her youth Lust herself tried to join the Vienna punk scene, and in this book she tells the story of two underage Viennese punk girls who run away to Italy without a cent to their name. The book proved to be Ulli Lust’s professional breakthrough and earned her numerous prizes (the 2010 ICOM Award for the best German comic publication, the Max und Moritz-Publikumspreis at the 2010 Erlanger Comic Salon, the 2011 Artémisia-Preis and the Prix révélation at the 2011 Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême). It has been translated into many European languages and has also had great success in its US version. »This comic is a sensation. Not because it’s so thick, but because Ulli Lust has a story to tell that defies comparison« (Andreas Platthaus, »FAZ«). With »Wie ich versuchte, ein guter Mensch zu sein« (2017; tr. How I tried to be a good person), Ulli Lust continues in the vein of her first autobiographical work with this sensuous and powerful story from her time as a young artist in 1990s Vienna. The protagonist is in an open relationship with two men; they both know of each other. One of them is Georg, an actor twenty years her senior, and Kimata, a Nigerian bon vivant, whom she marries to secure his permit of residence. However, their peaceful utopia changes into a drama of possessiveness and violence, until it finally ends in self-liberation.
Ulli Lust has a monthly comic strip in the Berlin English-language magazine »ExBerliner«, is currently a professor of illustration and comics at Hochschule Hannover, and since 2005 has managed the comic publishing website, electrocomics.de. She lives in Berlin.