We’re excited to announce that we’re working with Jessica Holmes on her upcoming book, Depression the Comedy: A Tale of Perseverance.

While Holmes is best known for her comedic work with Royal Canadian Air Farce, Second City, Just for Laughs, and her own sketch series The Holmes Show, the gifted comedian is also a writer, motivational speaker, and an advocate for mental illness. She published a memoir titled I Love Your Laughs: Finding the Light in My Screwball Life with McClelland & Stewart in 2004, and is due to release another—Depression the Comedy: A Tale of Perseverance.

In her upcoming book, Holmes takes readers on her journey—sometimes laugh out loud, sometimes cringe-worthy—from successful performer to basically living the life of a house cat. She covers marriage counselling, where jokes come from, the chicken and the egg of depression and comedy, surrounding the sofa with junk food so it looks like a tornado hit a 7-Eleven, her kids’ take on the perks of having a depressed mom (“We don’t have to clean up anything. Yesterday the cat barfed and mom just put a cushion on it and went back to playing on the iPad!”), and the obnoxiousness of anti-depressant commercials (“I never noticed the ocean before!”). Whether you have suffered from depression a little (“I get sad every January”) or a lot (“My psychiatrist doesn’t have a name for what I’ve got”), of maybe you just think real life calls for levity and understanding, this book is for you.

Depression the Comedy: A Tale of Perseverance will be available in Spring 2018.