The Book of Alchemy | A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life | Suleika Jaouad

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

From the time she was young, Suleika Jaouad has kept a journal. She’s used it to mark life’s biggest occasions and to weather its most ferocious storms. Journaling has buoyed her through illness, heartbreak, and the deepest uncertainty. And she is not alone: for so many people, keeping a journal is an essential tool for navigating both the personal peaks and valleys and the collective challenges of modern life. More than ever, we need a space for puzzling through.

A companion through challenging times, The Book of Alchemy is broken into themes ranging from new beginnings to love, loss, and rebuilding. Whether you’re a lifelong journaler or new to the practice, this book gives you the tools, direction, and encouragement to engage with discomfort, ask questions, peel back the layers, dream daringly, uncover your truest self—and in doing so, to learn to hold the unbearably brutal and astonishingly beautiful facts of life in the same palm.

Also includes essays from: Martha Beck • Nadia Bolz-Weber • Alain de Botton • Susan Cheever • Lena Dunham • Melissa Febos • Liana Finck • John Green • Marie Howe • Pico Iyer • Oliver Jeffers • Quintin Jones • Michael Koryta • Hanif Kureishi • Kiese Laymon • Cleyvis Natera • Ann Patchett • Esther Perel • Adrienne Raphel • Jenny Rosenstrach • Sarah Ruhl • Sharon Salzberg • Dani Shapiro • Mavis Staples • Linda Sue Park • Nafissa Thompson-Spires • Jia Tolentino • Lindy West • Lidia Yuknavitch • And many others

Suleika Jaouad is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Between Two Kingdoms, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. She wrote the Emmy Award-winning New York Times column and video series “Life, Interrupted,” and her essays and feature stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Vogue, among others. She is also the subject, along with husband Jon Batiste, of the Oscar-nominated documentary American Symphony—a portrait of two artists during a year of extreme highs and lows. A visual artist, her large-scale watercolors are the focus of several upcoming exhibitions. She is also the creator of the Isolation Journals, a weekly newsletter and global community that harnesses creativity as a tool to navigate life’s interruptions.