Early life and education When Bell was two, her American mother divorced her British father and took Gabrielle and her brother back to the United States. Ending up in a relatively isolated rural town in
Mendocino County, Bell writes that she "grew up . . . spending a lot of time reading, walking in the woods, and making up stories."
Lucky was collected by
Drawn & Quarterly in fall 2006, and then in 2007 was relaunched as a new series (vol. 2), also by Drawn & Quarterly, which lasted two issues. Next, in 2008, was
Cecil and Jordan in New York (Drawn & Quarterly), a collection of Bell's short comics work that had been published in various anthologies, including
Kramers Ergot (
Buenaventura Press),
Mome (
Fantagraphics), and
Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Book Four. Bell collaborated with French director
Michel Gondry on a film adaptation of the title story of
Cecil and Jordan in New York, in which a young woman turns herself into a chair so as not to be too much of a bother to those around her. The film, titled
Interior Design, was co-written by Bell and Gondry and directed by Gondry as part of the anthology film
Tôkyô!. Bell and Gondry also collaborated on
Kuruma Tohrimasu, a collection of drawings and photographs made during the production of
Interior Design. Conceived as a thank-you gift for the film's cast and crew,
Kuruma Tohrimasu was published as part of Drawn & Quarterly’s
Petits Livres series. Beginning in 2009, Bell entered into a publishing relationship with the new company
Uncivilized Books, a relationship that remains to the current day. In 2012, she started her
July Diary series, in which she vowed to do a comic every day in the month of July — "31 days, 31 comics." As of 2025, Uncivilized Books had published three volumes of Bell's
July Diary series.
The Voyeurs (Uncivilized Books, 2012) is a real-time memoir of a turbulent five years (2007–2011) in Bell's life. It collects episodes from
Lucky, in which she travels to Tokyo, Paris, the South of France, and all over the United States, but remains anchored by her home base of Brooklyn, where "sidekick" Tony (the real-life Tony Groutsis) provides ongoing insight, offbeat humor, and enduring friendship. Bell's first full-length graphic memoir,
Everything is Flammable, was released in April 2017.
Everything is Flammable was chosen as one of the best graphic novels of 2017 by
Entertainment Weekly, was a finalist for the 2017
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics, and was nominated for a
Broken Frontier Award for Best Graphic Non-Fiction. The book also received praises from acclaimed writers such as
Joyce Carol Oates and
Tao Lin. Bell has been a writer/artist in residence at several institutions, including
Bryn Mawr College and
Baruch College. In 2021, Bell led a five-day workshop on personal stories in comics at CAMP, a residential arts facility in the French
Pyrenees. == Personal life ==