Last week I told you I lost track of time watching Jay-Z at The Roots Picnic, getting lost in a playlist, and letting the week be what it was. It felt good to admit that. And it got me thinking about how rarely we actually let ourselves do that, just follow what feels good without a plan or a reason.
Those quiet moments and pockets of joy are exactly what author Anne Marie Wells set out to find when she boarded a plane to Iceland at 29, unemployed, and searching for something she couldn’t quite name yet. Instead of booking tours or following a guidebook, she walked up to a stranger in the airport and asked one simple question: what are your happiest memories here?
For five weeks she hitchhiked and backpacked across Iceland chasing the answers, from childhood sports fields and family farms to hidden waterfalls and the remote Highlands. Part adventure, part meditation on connection and joy, Happy Iceland, out June 27th from Star Belt Press, is a reminder that some of the best journeys begin when we slow down, actually listen, and find joy.
It took her ten years to write this book. And as she told me:
“You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t really skip over it and then suddenly be a good writer. You have to just learn all of it slowly as you learn it and then apply it to your writing.”
In this conversation we talked about:
What happiness actually looks like when strangers describe it out loud
Why asking what delighted you lands differently than keeping a gratitude journal
Learning to write a book from scratch, with no formal training, over ten years
The confidence it takes to travel solo and trust strangers with your story
The one song she’s had on repeat for months
You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.
You can find Anne Marie on Instagram and order Happy Iceland now ahead of the June 27th release.
The question I asked Anne Marie at the end of our conversation was: what’s the one lesson about happiness from your trip that you’ve actually kept? Her answer was that happiness lives in other people, that connection is the through line no matter the setting. It’s not a new idea, but hearing it from someone who hitchhiked across Iceland asking strangers about joy for five weeks gives it a different kind of weight.
If this conversation sat with you, here are a few other things to explore:
If our conversation inspired you to read more, start with Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book about a woman who left without a plan and found something she wasn’t looking for.
Anne Marie quoted Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer in our conversation, the other side of the same journey: what happens when the search for meaning pulls you away from people instead of toward them.
Anne Marie has had RAYE’s “Suzanne” on repeat for months, and I had never heard the song before our conversation. Consider this your introduction.
The NYT interviewed Laurie Santos, the Yale professor behind the most popular college course ever taught on happiness, and separately published a piece on how to actually feel loved. Both are worth your time this week.
And if today’s conversation stayed with you, Anne Marie writes about the writing life, upcoming events, and submission tips over at her Substack.
