As a storyteller, best-selling writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s greatest advantage may be her warm, intimate, witty voice. “If people tell me they feel as if I’m talking directly to them, that’s exactly what I want — I feel I’ve nailed it,” said the lauded journalist and author of the blockbuster memoir “Eat Pray Love”and six other books (her new novel, “City of Girls,” comes out in June) in a recent interview.

Gilbert is in top conversational form in her latest book, “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear,” a delightful and engaging self-help memoir. Hawaii residents will have the chance to hear her speak about tapping your inner creativity in person at Wanderlust Oahu, the annual yoga/ lifestyle retreat and music festival set for Thursday through March 3 at Turtle Bay Resort.

She leads a sold-out, full-day “immersion” in creativity Thursday, and gives a “Speakeasy” talk at the festival on March 1.

“I’ve never been to Hawaii: I’m so excited, so excited!” the New York City resident, 49, said in a phone call from her snowbound New Jersey country home.

It may come as a surprise for readers to learn that the gregarious, world-travelling adventurer of “Eat Pray Love” started out as a timid, fearful child. Her mother, though, wouldn’t let her say no to experience, and Gilbert overcame her fears, from skiing to writing.

The wide-ranging subjects of her fiction, from the musicians, laborers and cowboys of “Pilgrims” to the 19th-century botanist heroine of “The Signature of All Things,” attest to her irrepressible curiosity. In “Eat Pray Love,” Gilbert, divorced, flees another unhappy relationship, takes a vow of celibacy and a sabbatical from her job. She travels to Italy, India and Bali, where she falls in love with Felipe (Jose Nunes), an older Brazilian; her memoir “Committed” tells how they came to marry.

In 2016, she announced her separation from Nunes and pledged commitment to Rayya Elias, a longtime friend who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died last year.

In “Big Magic” we learn how we, too, can overcome our fears, change our lives and find and fulfill our unique creative selves. Read Gilbert’s books and let the magic happen: There’s no resisting her candor and pursuit of truth.

QUESTION: When did you discover that, as you tell us in “Big Magic,” creative inspiration comes from ideas, or “house elves,” that are conscious beings with a will of their own who seek to make us actualize them?

ANSWER: Because they come to me that way. The only thing odd is how long it took me to speak about it because it’s super “woo-woo” so I thought well, I’d better just keep this one in my pants, don’t go there. But people always ask me how I work, and it got to where I was old enough and felt I’d earned the right to say that.

I think it’s typical of what most children and many adults experience as creativity, but we live in this hyper-empirical moment in history.

One interviewer was so kind, really trying to help me. She said, ‘It’s almost as though you believe in what you’re saying, that ideas are not a metaphor.’

Ideas are not a metaphor!

Q: You vowed to become a writer at age 16. Have you ever been tempted to be anything else?

A: Writing has been the one consistent thread of my life; I’ve had a life that’s taken a lot of turns and done a lot of pivots since I was 16. Without writing I would be a real flake. It’s been my steadfast love and I’ve never waivered.

Q: In your preface to the 10th-anniversary edition of “Eat Pray Love” you reveal what you didn’t in the original edition: how deeply you were agonizing over the biological clock. Did deciding not to have children take courage?

A: Here’s an irony alert: What is really courageous is to have children! And yet, because of the cultural/biological assumption, it can seem it’s the easy choice to have kids. The entire current of human culture moves very quickly in that direction, and the job of DNA is to replicate itself.

My depression in my 30s was (over) this battleground. I haven’t the slightest bit of ambivalence now, pushing 50, but certainly did in my 30s. I’d done all the steps — had married, had a house, it was time (but) everything in me was in absolute revolution. My body just fell apart, had every psychosomatic illness. I’m so glad: I could not begin to have the life I have now and be able to devote my energies to the stuff I’m truly fascinated by.

I love kids. My nieces, nephews, godchildren, they’re a big part of my life, but there’s something else I came here to do.

(By the way, you might be hearing strange sounds, I’m just walking over to check on a chicken in the oven. I’m a woman, I can multitask.)

Q: Your dismissal of the myth of the suffering artist is refreshing, but can one really avoid it?

A: I’m so grateful for the work that I have. One thing that frustrates me is very successful artists who do nothing but complain. Like when Philip Roth met with a young writer and said, you should quit now, it never gets any better. Dude, where’s your gratitude?

Suffering is very straightforward. It will come to you, no need to seek it. Move through it as best you can, alternating between being brave and terrified. You’ll also have times of total relief from it.

Q: I’m very sorry your partner Rayya Elias died last year. Do you feel as if you can or want to write about her, or is it too recent to think about?

A: This is the moment. I actually have finished a novel (“City of Girls”) about New York showgirls in the 1940s that I started 2 months after Rayya died; it will be published in June. I wanted to do something different, very light, very fun, very sexy, not to dive back into that pain.

I can’t imagine I won’t write about her. I have so much trust I will be told when the time comes and will be the servant to that, but not until the call comes from the mother ship.

Q: You also skewer such platitudes as “follow your passion” and authors saying their books are their babies.

A: It’s been the exact opposite for me: I’m the baby and every book I’ve ever written has raised me.

Michael Chabon, a friend, wrote in GQ about being a novelist and having four kids, a life for which he’s grateful because his books can’t love him back.

I feel my books love me back. They’ve taken such good care of me, introduced me to all sorts of interesting people, allowed me to travel the world.

You can take all those assumptions and flip them.

WANDERLUST OAHU

Four days of classes, talks and daylong immersion workshops in yoga, wellness, surf and SUP, environmental sustainability and local foods; evening musical performances.

>> Where: Turtle Bay Resort, 57-091 Kamehameha Hwy., Kahuku

>> When: Thursday through March 3

>> Cost: One-day tickets including 3 activities, lecture and music, $120-$155; three-day, Friday-Sunday ticket, $445

>> Info: wanderlustoahu.com

Some highlights:

>> Organic Farming immersion with Kelly Stern, 8:30 a.m. Thursday

>> Yoga sessions with legendary Hawaiian surfer Gerry Lopez, 1 and 3 p.m. March 2, 11 a.m. March 3

>> Ecokarma immersion led by Eoin Finn, 9 a.m. and, with Chelsey Korus, at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, with nature walks, yoga and beach clean-up.

>> Talks on conscious cannabis by Steve Sakala of MANA Botanicals, 11 a.m. March 1, and yogi entrepreneurship by Robinda Mohar, 1 p.m. March 1

Music-only tickets:

>> Electronic duo Bob Moses, 6:30 p.m. March 1, Main Stage; $25, $20 advance

>> Pop/soul artist Corinne Bailey Rae, 6:30 p.m. March 2, Main Stage; $30, $25 advance

>> Advance combo March 1-2 tickets, $39 advance

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CORRECTION: 
As of Feb. 25, tickets were still available for the Gilbert’s all-day immersion — a creativity workshop with writing exercises — on Thursday. The tickets are available for $245, plus tax, at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wanderlust-oahu-2019-tickets-43860260219#tickets. An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported that Gilbert’s all-day immersion was sold out.