In her nearly 37 years, Suleika Jaouad has experienced an almost unimaginable assortment of life’s highs and lows. She has written a popular and widely praised New York Times column and published a bestselling memoir. A talented musician and artist herself, as well as a graduate of Princeton, she’s married to the brilliant musician and composer Jon Batiste.

But alongside all these impressive achievements and undeniable good fortune, she is confronted with a diagnosis of leukemia at age 22, faced a recurrence a decade later and then again three years after that, endured two risky and arduous bone marrow transplants, and lives with the knowledge that her remaining years will be shadowed by that disease.

All of the above makes her uniquely qualified to produce THE BOOK OF ALCHEMY: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. In it, she and 100 contributors share their often compelling personal stories and offer both encouragement and prompts to help anyone embrace the practice of journaling.

"As Suleika Jaouad and the people whose accounts she shares make clear, no skills or special tools are necessary to embark on this rewarding journey. All that’s required is a willingness to look deeply into one’s heart and mind and then express what one finds there on the page."

The book had its genesis in an online newsletter, the Isolation Journals, that Jaouad created in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. That community grew to more than 200,000 participants who responded to daily posts and prompts designed to diminish the loneliness they experienced in a world of illness, shutdowns, enforced separation and fear.

Though she has kept a journal as long as she can remember, for Jaouad the practice took on even greater importance when she first was diagnosed with cancer in 2011. “Journaling through illness gave me a productive way to engage with my new reality,” she writes. “Rather than shutting down or surrendering to hopelessness, I could trace the contours of what I was thinking and feeling and gain a sense of agency over it.” The series of journal entries she produced served as the foundation for a New York Times column, “Life, Interrupted.” Later, journaling provided her with an entryway into producing BETWEEN TWO KINGDOMS, the account of her 15,000-mile solo cross-country road trip.

Each of the 10 sections in THE BOOK OF ALCHEMY follows an identical format. Jaouad writes about a topic --- such as “On Memory” or “On Fear” --- and then yields the stage to 10 of her contributors to offer a short personal essay, some as brief as a page. Each essay is followed by a prompt, or a series of them, that encourage readers to put pen to paper for what may turn out to be something only ever seen by an audience of one. Here’s an example from well-known novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro:

“What would you write if you weren’t afraid? Set a timer for ten minutes. Don’t worry. No one’s going to read a word. You can shred it. You can burn it. You can keep it. It’s entirely up to you. Ready, set go! Begin.”

Other prompts urge readers to write about a teacher; describe the funniest thing that happened to them in the past year, but from the point of view of an inanimate object that witnessed it; or recall a time they dreaded something, but it turned out to be okay. Not every prompt will land for every reader, but it’s certain that at least some will connect and perhaps unleash a flood of memories and words.

Along with Shapiro, THE BOOK OF ALCHEMY features prominent writers like George Saunders, John Green, Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert and Salman Rushdie, as well as performers such as Mavis Staples, Lena Dunham and Jon Batiste. The fact that the majority of the book’s essayists aren’t household names doesn’t make their contributions any less valuable.

Beyond Jaouad’s account of her battle with cancer, there are many heartbreaking stories of sudden death, catastrophic illness, addiction and devastation. Out of tragic circumstances like these, we gain at least a glimmer of understanding of how people somehow persevere, and how journaling about those experiences, far from being a meaningless self-indulgence, has become a critical survival skill for many.

One of the occupational hazards of book reviewing is the requirement to begin the assigned book on page one and dutifully move through it to the final page. Without discouraging anyone from following that path, it’s decidedly not the ideal way to read this book. Instead, pick one of the sections at random and, after digesting Jaouad’s thoughtful, heartfelt introduction, dive deeply into that section’s 10 mini-essays and prompts. Alternatively, hopscotch through the book, reading stories at random and selecting prompts that strike a meaningful chord. In any case, allow time to put the book aside and actually do the work that Jaouad hopes to inspire.

For each person whose life has been enriched by keeping a journal, no doubt there are many others who have never considered doing it or have pursued the practice for a time and then abandoned it. As Suleika Jaouad and the people whose accounts she shares make clear, no skills or special tools are necessary to embark on this rewarding journey. All that’s required is a willingness to look deeply into one’s heart and mind and then express what one finds there on the page.