Join David Burton and Robinsons Bookshop for a presentation that will surely end in both laughter and tears. Come and listen to the 2014 Text Prize winner discuss some highlights from his funny, sad and serious debut memoir How to Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Sex and Teenage Confusion.

David Burton is a twenty-seven-year-old writer from Brisbane, Queensland, whose memoir How to Be Happy won the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing in 2014.

How to Be Happy is a funny, sad and serious memoir. It is David Burton’s story of his turbulent life at high school and beyond. Feeling out of place and convinced that he is not normal, David has a rocky start. He longs to have a girlfriend, but his first ‘date’ is a disaster. There’s the catastrophe of the school swimming carnival—David is not sporty—and friendships that take devastating turns. Then he finds some solace in drama classes with the creation of ‘Crazy Dave’, and he builds a life where everything is fine. But everything is not fine.

And, at the centre of it all, trying desperately to work it all out, is the real David.

How to Be Happy tackles depression, friendship, sexual identity, suicide, academic pressure, love and adolescent confusion. It’s a brave and honest account of one young man’s search for a happy, true and meaningful life that will resonate with readers young and old.