While we may know Anna Kone from the Pen15, now we're getting to know the real Anna Konkle as she moves from the iconic and truthful TV series Pen15 and dives deeper into her life and experiences in a brand-new memoir, The Sane One. Oh, and she's not done being real. In fact, she's just getting started as she opens up to Cosmopolitan about writing her most honest work yet.
Cosmopolitan has a first-look at Anna Konkle's The Sane One, which is set to be released on May 5, 2026. Anna dives back into her childhood as she looks back at her estrangement with her father and their emotional reconnection years later. It's both funny and direct, bringing the realistic humor that fans are used to seeing from her previous works in new medium. Here's some more info from our friends at Random House:
In this emotional and laugh-out-loud coming-of-age memoir, the co-creator of Hulu’s brilliant Pen15 grapples with the reappearance of her estranged father —and whether it’s possible to reconnect before it’s too late.
For Anna Konkle’s childhood, her father was her hero—a hyper-charismatic, larger-than-life human resource manager at 7-Eleven. But their closeness was constantly interrupted by the screaming matches and heavy silences between him and her mother, eventually culminating in a bitter divorce that literally split the family house down the middle, with one parent on each side.
College felt like freedom, and Anna filled her time searching for the husband she’d never divorce and the orgasm she’d never had, while waiting tables at fancy restaurants and getting lackluster acting gigs, the strangest of which had her working celebrity Halloween parties. But just as she begins to thrive, her father starts to struggle. Not long after she moves to LA to pursue acting and writing, her dad’s increasingly erratic behavior forces her to cut off contact with him, until, years later, he knocks at her door.
Written in intimately beautiful prose, The Sane One is a tragicomic memoir of growing up, falling apart, getting older, and trying to come back together while there’s still time.
Just like how the book mixes humor and heart together, the book's cover mixes an illustration of her parents with a real-life photo of her childhood.
"I'm not sure why but I have an obsessive drive to pursue memory, like a high-speed chase or something. But I also realize there's a stuntedness to that," Anna told Cosmopolitan. "I'd like the cover to feel the same: DIY collage of the past by someone who can't move on (hi), doodling their dead family unit back together and trying to convince self of normalcy."
Anna chatted with Cosmopolitan about the "masochistic" and "healing" process of writing her first memoir, behind honest with both herself and the audience, and the most surprising part that felt natural about the project.
You go into different parts of your life and family dynamics in this book. How did you determine what you wanted to share versus what you wanted to keep out?
I try not to be the over-sharer at the party. It's an uphill battle. Writing a memoir was the opposite. There's very little I keep to myself.
Did writing things down and reliving memories make you look at things differently?
In my early 20s, I waited tables for Gabrielle Hamilton (chef and owner of Prune restaurant, author of Blood Bones & Butter / Next of Kin). GH warned me that writing memoirs can feel masochistic-- burning yourself over and over, for years. My therapist said it could be healing. It ended up being both.
A sizable piece to the book is examining this estrangement with my father that began in adulthood, after a close relationship prior. Through the years we had little to no contact and I had trouble explaining to friends how that loss came to be. Because there were no buzz words involved, if that makes sense. Since Im drawn to storytelling that lives in the gray, covert family dynamics was something I wanted to shout out loud (and then maybe hide after). A lot of this memoir deals with impactful moments that sit to the left and right of more obvious family issues, and I wanted to try to talk about that. But it’s funny I hope too.
Was there anything in particular that surprised you about the writing process versus writing for television?
Quick deadlines for tv were crazy-making but fun. Then you'd crash hard and do it again. There was more instant gratification, maybe? But overall, I found the book process really enjoyable. I think I am a slow prose writer. I'm surprised by how naturally solitude felt.
Why did a book feel like the right medium to tell this part of your story?
There is something a little experimental and meandering to my favorite books and it feels less acceptable in tv/film sometimes. Especially in comedy. Which is unfortunate. I also think a reader's imagination is arguably the most exciting medium for a memoir because it uses the same processor as authentic memory.
There is both humor and brutal honesty here. How did you find the balance of both while being true to your own journey?
I'm a very sensitive person. But at the same time I think life in earnest is crazy funny. Brutality and humor probably are one for me.
Obviously, fans are going to be excited to learn more about you and your story. But what do you want people who aren’t as familiar of you to know?
When I began my obsession with reading memoirs, they made me realize how many secrets I carried. They also were invitations to face myself and try to heal.
My first foray in exposing my own truth was co-creating Pen15 (semi-autobiographical tv comedy about being thirteen in the year 2000). Maya, my real-life best friend and I (at almost 30 yo) played tween bffs, but we cast real thirteen-year-olds around us. It was batshit and looked like a sketch at first glance but our goal was to represent the ageless twist and turn to fit-in and be loved, no matter the age. But the night before it came out felt like I was going to die. The impending humiliation! That's never totally gone away, though I'm proud of it too, finally. Eventually when viewers felt seen by our secrets, it made every pain worth it. A lot of press called it a "cringe comedy." The irony is we mostly tried to hold up a mirror to real memories. Sure the mirror showed the crude, ridiculous, funny, gross, cute, sad, dumb, so on but if that’s cringe then life is. Except to me, life is not cringe. At somepoint it was called a traumedy, and that clicked. Maybe The Sane One is that too.
What do you hope people take away from this book?
A comrade in the war and joy of life. And how we’re okay.
The Sane One, by Anna Konkle will be released on May 5, 2026 from Random House. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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