OUT 05/09/23 Available wherever books are sold and also I have a few deluxe book packages I’m selling myself that come signed with a print & other stuff

I’ll be doing readings in NYC, LA and the Bay Area, please check here for dates and locations, starting May 9th!

Update: Impossible People made the following Best Books of 2023 lists: NPR, the New Yorker, Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Public Library, Bookshop.org, Powells, Library Journal

Description from the publisher:

In her keenly observed graphic memoir, Impossible People, celebrated cartoonist Julia Wertz chronicles her haphazard attempts at sobriety and the relentlessly challenging, surprisingly funny, and occasionally absurd cycle of addiction and recovery.

Opening at the culmination of a disastrous trip to Puerto Rico, the first page of Impossible People finds Julia standing stupefied in the middle of the jungle beside a rental Jeep she’s just crashed. From this moment, the story flashes back to the beginning of her five-year journey towards sobriety that includes group therapy sessions, relapses, an ill-fated relationship, terrible dates, and an unceremonious eviction from her New York City apartment. Far from the typical addiction narrative that follows an upward trajectory from rock bottom to rehab to recovery, Impossible People portrays the lesser told but more common story: That the road to recover is not always linear. With unflinching honesty, Wertz details the arduous, frustrating, and hilarious story of trying and failing and trying again.

Description from me: This book isn’t really about recovery, it’s about being young(ish) and having bad coping mechanisms. It’s about learning how to not be an asshole. It’s about all the stuff that happened while I was slowly getting better over an eight year period- a disastrous relationship, making friends, urban exploring, making bad decisions, making good ones, career stuff, crashing a car, meeting famous people, family shit, getting evicted, etc- before I left New York. I also make a lot of jokes; my only enduring coping mechanism.

Some random sample pages: