Jenny Lawson offers fellow travelers creative tools for when the going gets tough.

On this week’s episode of Fully Booked, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson joins us to discuss How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself (Penguin Life, March 31). Kirkus calls Lawson’s latest “self-help with a twist of humor.”

Lawson is an artist, activist, and award-winning humorist best known for her inspiring candor in sharing her struggle with depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. She is the author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Furiously Happy, Broken (in the Best Possible Way), and You Are Here, as well as the owner and proprietress of Nowhere Bookshop, an independent bookstore and bar in San Antonio. She currently lives in Texas with her husband, child, dog, and cats.

Here’s a bit more from our review of How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: “Blogger and memoirist Lawson (Furiously Happy, 2015) assembles dozens of brief chapters, often less than a page long, of recommendations that have worked for her as she has dealt with depression, anxiety, and ADHD, based on ‘a lifetime learning to operate a brain that vacillates between overthinking and total shutdown.’ Addressing the reader directly, affectionately, and often mildly profanely, [Lawson] suggests that ‘this book is equally designed to be read through in a single sitting or opened as needed.’…At her best, Lawson’s quirky sense of humor will make you laugh out loud, which might be the best possible form of self-help, as when she advises her readers to consider that ‘we’re doing way better than moles. They’re just rearranging dirt underground their whole lives. What a bunch of weirdos.’”

Lawson and I discuss some of the mental health tools she uses to manage depression, anxiety, and ADHD; her unconventional approach to writing self-help; and the importance of making art (even if you think you’re not very good at it). At the end of our delightful conversation, she recommends a new novel—with an irresistible title—to listeners. Follow @kirkus_reviews on Instagram, DM us the title of that book, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a $100 Visa gift card, courtesy of Kirkus.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Acadia by Sterling Nixon

Song of Hummingbird Highway by K.M. Cookie

Duck Redux by Nic Bettauer

Come Up Big by Charles W.B. Wardell III

Rose Dhu by Mark Murphy

Fully Booked is produced by Jessica Lockhart and Megan Labrise.