Issa Rae is perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Now this Internet innovator is a bestselling author of a book of the same name and is gearing up for a comedy series on HBO.

Issa Rae first came to my attention with her web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl a few years ago. Her style of comedy is quirky, sometimes a bit random, and always relatable.

After all, who among us hasn’t encountered awkward situations at work, awkward dates, and the like? I was far from the only person to appreciate her witty take on everyday life. Her shows have garnered hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube and have propelled her career as a writer, producer, and director to the stratosphere.

Currently, Rae is a co-host on Aspire TV’s ensemble talk show, Exhale. Rae also continues to write, direct, and produce acclaimed web shows. And she has recently published a book, also entitled The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. The text is part memoir, part sarcastic rumination on the state of the world, not unlike Amy Poehler’s Yes Please and Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me?  Some of the most hilarious moments of Rae’s memoir are her unabashed reflections of growing up as a sexually curious young woman in a world where girls are alternately sheltered and hypersexualized. Because of these mixed messages Rae describes surfing the Internet as a tween and engaging in a host of troubling yet wryly funny cyber relationships.

Indeed, the first line of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Issa Rae declares, “At only eleven years of age, I was a cyber ho.” This tongue-in-cheek designation is not attempt to slut shame her former self, but rather underscores the slut shaming language often used to describe young women’s burgeoning sexuality.   Interestingly and perhaps because of her childhood exploits, Rae is wary of raising children: “I always say I don’t want a daughter because I don’t want a daughter that’s as dumb and irresponsible as I was, and I will watch her like a hawk… And then when I have those thoughts, I’m like, well, ‘What the f— was my mom doing?’ and I think it was a different time because she definitely policed us in a way that was strict. I have a lot of respect for her and the way that she raised us, but I’m scared to death about the stuff they could get into and I am worried I’ll be too protective, in a way.”

Besides her new book, Rae has been working with acclaimed comedy writer Larry Wilmore to create a pilot for HBO. Deadline reports that, “HBO is moving ahead with Insecure, giving a pilot order to the comedy project starring Issa Rae. Co-created and written by Rae and Larry Wilmore,Insecure focuses on the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of a modern day African-American woman. These are also themes Rae has tackled in her successful webseries, The Misadventures Of Awkward Black Girl, which won a Shorty Award.”

To that end, Rae is interesting in doing new things in how we understand black comedy, claiming that: “black humor has not been allowed to evolve in the same way. That was frustrating. I’m tired of this slapstick, hood humor. That’s not all of black people. And that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s not the only thing we laugh at, and that’s the only thing we’re allowed to find humorous. That’s where my other sensibilities came from. Like, okay, I’m watching ‘Curb [Your Enthusiasm]‘ and I’m watching ‘Seinfeld’ and these are considered white shows but I know a lot of black people that love them and find them funny so why can’t we have people of color in them, you know?”

Issa Rae has her hands full: she is writing, producing, directing, and sometimes starring in a host of web series; she developing projects for television; writing film scripts; co-hosting a television show; and has written a New York Times bestseller. Clearly, the sky is the limit for this rising star.