Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I admit there was a stretch in my youth

where I brought into the myth of the writer as drinker. I imagined all my favorite writers as

being able to toss a few drinks back and then crank out with the great American novel.

So did the writer Rax King, who's on the pod today

talking about her new essay collection, sloppy. A lot of the book is about substances and

sobriety, and she talked to NPR's Juana Summers about the writers that finally convinced

her that booze and books don't necessarily have to go hand in hand. That's ahead.

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In her first book, Rax King celebrated the things that we love that some people may think are not in good taste, like the Jersey Shore or the Cheesecake Factory. That collection

of personal essays was called Tacky. Now she's out with a new book on a different theme. This one

is called Sloppy. I had been writing some of the essays in Sloppy without having a grand

unifying principle. And then similar to what

happened with Tacky, I'd looked up one day and realized that they were all pretty much about addiction

and bad habits and other such things. And so sloppiness seemed like a good, you know, organizing

framework.

King is now three years sober from alcohol and cocaine. It's a topic that comes up a lot in

this book. And I asked her what it's been like sharing so openly her journey through addiction

...