Jen Tota McGivney joins the Spotlight to chat about her latest book, Finding Your Walden

Author Name: Jen Tota McGivney

Book Title: Finding Your Walden: How to Strive Less, Simplify More, & Embrace What Matters Most

Book Genre: Happiness Studies

Release Date: May 5, 2025

Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

Welcome, Jen! Please tell us a bit about your book.

Finding Your Walden combines happiness studies with classic lit, showing how we can improve our lives through the ideas of the 1854 classic, Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I share stories of people who embrace Thoreau’s pare-down-to-trade-up lifestyle and who prove that the life hack for our moment is living better with less.

What was the spark? What drew you to write a book about this topic? What inspired you to tell this particular story?

Walden’s my favorite book, and I joke that Thoreau is my life coach. He taught me that there can be more value in letting go than adding on, and it’s important to resist the demands of our culture of accumulation, one that pressures us to perpetually work more/earn more/buy more/become more. It’s impossible to win a game with a moving goalpost.

In Walden, Thoreau teaches us to define “enough,” to determine when we can stop striving so much and start living a little more. In Finding Your Walden, I show how people live that message and simplify their lives today, through ideas like four-day workweeks, capsule wardrobes, digital sabbaths, and sabbaticals. We can measure success not by a salary or a job title, but by how well we live our lives.

Is it important to read Walden before reading your book?

Not at all. The book can be enjoyed by serious Thoreau fans as well as people who’ve never read him. One reader told me that she bailed on Walden back in high school English class, but this book encouraged her to pick it up again. That was the ultimate compliment.

What was your research process like for Finding Your Walden?

I combined my two favorite things: literature and journalism. In addition to re-reading Walden and pouring over literary criticism, I interviewed people about the concepts in the book. When I researched the principle of retreat, for example (“Principle 2: Create Space Between You and the World”), I talked to people about their experiences with sabbaticals, meditation, and intentional vacations, as well as psychologists and doctors about the importance of rest and career breaks.

From your perspective, what’s the hardest thing about writing and researching? And what do you love most about it?

Deciding when to stop! It was hard to narrow down to a few principles and keep moving. Finding Your Walden includes five principles of intentional living, and each could have been its own book:

  • Walden Principle 1: Know the True Cost of Things
  • Walden Principle 2: Create Space Between You and the World
  • Walden Principle 3: Embrace Your Inner Misfit
  • Walden Principle 4: Know What You Work For
  • Walden Principle 5: Spend Life Lavishly

What’s capturing your imagination these days outside of reading and writing?

I’m trying to figure out how to make a difference in a world that needs more people making a difference. Part of simplifying one’s life means creating space to give back, and I’m seeking more opportunities to do that.

What was the last book you read? What did you think of it?

Playground by Richard Powers. It’s brilliant and beautiful and heartbreaking, addressing the dangers of a world that adopts new technologies as quickly as possible without pausing to question how (or whether) it should. Thoreau would love this one, too, I think.

Where can readers find you? 

You can find me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenmcgivney) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/jen.mcgivney/). Fellow readers and writers, please connect and send me book recs – I love to hear what everyone’s enjoying!

If you’re in the Charlotte area, I’ll have a book signing and conversation at Park Road Books on May 7, 2025, and another at Main Street Books in Davidson on July 17, 2025. I’ll also be at the Thoreau Society Gathering this July in Concord, MA.

Thank you, Jen! Finding Your Walden: How to Strive Less, Simplify More, & Embrace What Matters Most is out NOW.

Finding Your Walden: How to Strive Less, Simplify More, & Embrace What Matters Most

Finding Your Walden is self-help meets choose your adventure inspired by the philosophy of Thoreau. It applies a journalist’s lens to a misunderstood literary icon, exploring how experts—psychologists, leaders, and scholars—support Thoreau’s principles as guideposts for today’s Great Reassessment and how they can be adapted today, and why they should. As people reassess priorities to create values-based lifestyles in a profit-based society, Thoreau’s life offers a precedent, and his philosophy provides a path.

Finding Your Walden isn’t about shunning money or success. It’s about grappling with the purpose of the first and the meaning of the second. Thoreau sets us on a path to discover fulfillment and happiness—we just need to stop at a cabin on our way.

Author Bio:

Jen Tota McGivney is a writer in Charlotte, North Carolina. She’s the back-page columnist for Charlotte Magazine, and her work also appears in SUCCESS Magazine, Our State Magazine, and Southern Living, among others. She has a master’s degree in English and a soft spot for the transcendentalists. Finding Your Walden is her first book.

McGivney lives with her husband, Jimmy, and their rescue pitties, Phoebe and Maddie.