For more than two years now, late Thursday afternoon every week I find myself surfing over to “The Rumpus” to see if the lit mag has posted a new “Dear Sugar” column. I convince myself that surely this time, it will be safe to read the thing at work. I mean, those other awkwardly emotional episodes at my desk were just flukes, right? I’m an experienced, no — a hardened reader, for chrissakes. This is what I do.

And every week, by the time I reach the end of the anonymously written advice column, I’m in tears.

I take some comfort when I read other readers’ comments following each “Dear Sugar” post; it’s clear I’m not alone. Visit the column’s Facebook page, and it’s plain to see there are  legions of us so ensnared by her irresistible combination of fierce compassion and plainspoken eloquence.

As you’d expect, given the form, people write in for advice about loss and love gone awry, deeply felt professional frustrations and unlovely jealousies. But the “Dear Sugar” section in “The Rumpus” has never dealt much with the wedding-related quandaries, household squabbles or questions of workplace etiquette you see in other publications’ advice columns. Both the published letters and responses are variously funny and sharp, big-hearted and tough and occasionally profane — but all involved, readers and writer alike, are unabashedly, refreshingly earnest, never petty or glib.

“Dear Sugar” is notable for tackling the hard sorts of questions, intimate queries about things that obviously matter deeply to those who send them in — sore spots, secret fears and shames, identity crises, loss and years-long heartaches. This is soft-underbelly stuff, real vulnerability made public. And without irony or snark, week after week, “Sugar” weaves us all a story in reply to them, lovely little essays rooted in her own lived experience, rich with kindness and moments of revelation, and never predictable. The column is as beautifully written as it is humane. Weekly or not, each installment feels rare.

(If you’re not familiar with “Dear Sugar,” here’s a link to the archived columns. Just read them. Trust me — you’re in for a treat.)

There’s an unexpected and remarkable sense of community that emerges when thousands of people cry at their desks, reading the same writer at the same time, week after week. And until this February, we didn’t even know the identity of the person behind it all, who’d affected us regular readers so deeply. Then, on Valentine’s Day, Minnesota native-turned-Pacific Northwestern essayist and novelist Cheryl Strayed came out as “Sugar.”

Turns out, she’s been writing essays and stories for years, in “The Sun” and “Brain, Child” magazines, among others. I remember reading her heart-wrenching novel, “Torch,” when it came out years ago. Now, she’s on a book tour around the country promoting her just-released memoir, “Wild.” Save the date: she headed back home to Minnesota next week for a reading at the newly relocated, expanded Common Good Books.

I’ve read “Wild:” it’s a heart-on-the-sleeve memoir about coping with grief and losing a parent too soon, but it’s also about the kindness of strangers and hard-won epiphanies, small graces and what it feels like to brave the thicket of young adulthood to blaze a new trail for one’s life. The story she tells is just as vibrant, surprising and self-aware as you’d expect a memoir from the amazing “Sugar” to be.

On Wednesday, April 18 at 7 p.m., Cheryl Strayed will discuss her new memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” at Common Good Books, 38 South Snelling Ave., St. Paul, Minn. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information about the author: http://www.cherylstrayed.com/.