Rax King Hopes New Book “Sloppy” Will Tell "Someone What They Need To Hear, When They Need to Hear It" (Exclusive)

The 17 essays "approach bad habits with emotional intelligence, kindness and — most importantly— humor."

Rax King is back!

The James Beard Award-nominated writer has a new collection of essays hitting the shelves. Sloppy , due out from Vintage on July 29, 2025, "explores sobriety, begrudging self-improvement and the habits we cling to with clenched fists," according to the book's synopsis.

The 17 essays that comprise the collection "approach bad habits with emotional intelligence, kindness and — most importantly — humor."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

In an exclusive email interview with PEOPLE, King shared how Sloppy came to be.

"I originally intended Sloppy to be an addiction memoir, but my friend, the writer Lisa Carver, saw a super early draft of it and said it seemed more like a memoir of life as a 'quiet f---up.' That's a term I use in one of the early essays to describe myself, and it ended up being the idea of the whole collection," King shares.

"There are all these people, myself included, getting wasted and blowing out their lives and doing their jobs a---backwards wrong without anybody noticing," she continues.

King, who co-hosts the podcast Low Culture Boil alongside Amber Rollo, published her first collection of essays, Tacky, in Nov. 2021. That book focused on "the power of pop culture" and investigated how it "imprint[s] itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one’s commitment to 'good' taste," according to the synopsis.

Comparing the two works, King tells PEOPLE, "My second book does and doesn't feel different from my first, in roughly the same ways that I do and don't feel like a different person than I was when I wrote Tacky five years ago. I mean, both books are about my mistakes and crimes, so I'd certainly hope I'm guilty of different ones now!"

Related: Chrissy Teigen Talks About the Book That Inspired Her Sobriety, Quit Like a Woman

King, who became sober in 2022, says she hopes Sloppy "tells someone what they need to hear, when they need to hear it."

"I never would have gotten sober myself if other books and people hadn't told me what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it," she adds.

Sloppy by Rax King comes out from Vintage on July 29, 2025 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.