Anna Konkle Uses Humor to Cope. Her Favorite Books Do the Same

The 'PEN15' star shares which "traumedies" inspired her debut memoir, 'The Sane One.'

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a headshot of actress and author anna konkle wearing a denim shirt white top and jeans opposite the cover of her memoir titled the sane one
(Image credit: Sela Shiloni / Random House)

When you're looking to get lost in a book, sometimes you need your reading material to match your mood. With Marie Claire's series "Buy the Book," we do the heavy lifting for you. We're offering curated, highly specific recommendations for whatever you're looking for—whether you're in your feels or hooked on a subgenre trending on #BookTok.

In this author-curated rendition, Anna Konkle—the writer and actress best known for co-creating and starring in the beloved Hulu series Pen15—shares her favorite "traumedy" books.

When Anna Konkle set out to make PEN15 with her best friend and collaborator, Maya Erskine, she didn’t envision it would be dubbed a “cringe-comedy.” Instead, she thought of the coming-of-age Hulu series as a “traumedy”—a trauma-comedy that uses levity to explore tragedy, or, in this case, the universal woes of middle school.

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Long before the 39-year-old even realized she was interested in writing comedy, Konkle saw humor as a powerful coping mechanism. She tells Marie Claire that she grew up in a household that revered “funny, smart people;” it instilled in her the idea that “life was easier if you found the joke first—better than being the joke.”

It’s how she moved through mining her preteen memories for her hit series, and how she moves through her debut book, The Sane One. The memoir, out May 5, is about her complicated relationship with her father, whom she became estranged from following her parents’ divorce, and later reconnected with.

The book is equal parts hysterical and moving—a balance that Konkle says feels intuitive to her because it reflects how she views reality. “To me, life is a series of minutiae-goals for survival, seemingly mundane tasks sitting to the left of a dramatic phone call or car accident or birth—the wonderfully dumb thing beside the tidal wave,” she says. “Like, watching Love Island—with the big tits and dramatic fights—while lying in a pull-out chair in hospice next to Dad, the nurse asking if he’s hot, and my dad answering, ‘I’d like to think so,’ but barely moving.”

So it’s fitting that Konkle’s favorite books take a similar approach. Here, she shares the traumedies she loves for being both “heroic” and “[giving] us company,” ranging from recent literary fiction hits to bestselling memoirs to children’s books.

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Sadie Bell
Sadie Bell
Senior Culture Editor

Sadie Bell is the Senior Culture Editor at Marie Claire, where she edits, writes, and helps to ideate stories across movies, TV, books, music, and theater, from interviews with talent to pop culture features and trend stories. She has a passion for uplifting rising stars, and a special interest in cult-classic movies, emerging arts scenes, and music. She has over nine years of experience covering pop culture and her byline has appeared in Billboard, Interview Magazine, NYLON, PEOPLE, Rolling Stone, Thrillist and other outlets.