What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or remember. Bursting with full-color drawings, comics, and collages, autobiographical sections and gentle creative guidance, each page is an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary." Lynda Barry explores the depths of the inner and outer realms of creation and imagination, where play can be serious, monsters have purpose, and not knowing is an answer unto itself.

How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? These types of questions permeate the pages of What It Is, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. Her insight and sincerity will tackle the most persistent of inhibitions, calling back every kid who quit drawing to again feel alive at the experiential level. Comprised of completely new material, this is her first Drawn &  Quarterly book.

"This brilliant, beautiful, nearly uncategorizable book is a print version of Barry's famous seminar 'Writing the Unthinkable' a class about writing from 'images,' recollected or imagined moments. It's part cartooning, part handwritten text, part ornate multimedia collage (with heartbreaking pieces of decades-old school papers and words snipped out of old textbooks) — all three appear on almost every page, most of which Barry constructed by decorating every available space on ruled yellow notebook paper. The first and longest section is a bizarre and hilarious memoir of Barry's creative impulses: how they developed when she was a child, how they flickered and faded when she started asking herself 'Is this good?' and 'Does this suck?' and how they returned when she learned to escape that trap. The core of the book, though, explains the 'writing the unthinkable' technique; it's narrated by a sea monster and stars a 'magic cephalopod.' Finally, Barry shows us a sheaf of her note pad, the pages she fills with doodles and spare phrases while she's working on a 'real' project; they are, naturally, as vivid and radiantly eccentric as everything else here. The whole thing is overflowing with quirks, strangeness and charm, and makes palpable Barry's affection for her students and the act of art making itself. Two visions of New Orleans: one you may recognize, the other — hopefully not." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Deliciously drawn (with fragments of collage worked into each page), insightful and bubbling with delight in the process of artistic creation. A+" Salon

Cartoonist, novelist, and playwright Lynda Barry is the creator behind the syndicated strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. Her books include One Hundred Demons and The Good Times Are Killing Me.