Miriam Engelberg who became a first time graphic novelist this year with CANCER MADE ME A SHALLOWER PERSON has died at age 48 of breast cancer.:

“I’d be telling a friend something upsetting about the latest twist and turn in my cancer saga, but as the words came out of my mouth they would turn into something absurd and we’d both end up laughing,â€? she wrote.

Before she was diagnosed in 2001, she worked for a San Francisco nonprofit called Compass Point doing computer work, and published a comic book, “Planet 501c3,â€? about the nonprofit world. She had no formal drawing training, and her style was basic; the book is in black and white.

“I started doing this before I was diagnosed with cancer,â€? she told the AP. “I started doing cartoons when my son was a baby to relieve stress. I wrote the first one about waiting to hear about the results from my mammogram. It just came out of that.â€?

As she finished her book, she thought she had a happy ending: a successful round of radiation and chemotherapy. But then she got the news that the cancer was spreading. She decided to add a few panels about it.