Cheryl Strayed
The voice behind TheRumpus.net's popular "Dear Sugar" column, Cheryl Strayed has been hailed as "the ultimate advice columnist for the Internet age." Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, Oprah's Book Club 2.0 inaugural selection. She is a dynamic speaker who inspires audiences with her own story of loss and recovery. Read Full BiographyAbout Cheryl Strayed
Strayed is the author of the acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling memoir, Wild. At age 22, Strayed finds herself shattered by two major life events: her mother’s sudden death from cancer and the end of her young marriage. To cope, Strayed uses drugs and sex before she hits rock bottom and decides to confront her emotional pain by attempting to trek over 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. Wild tells the amateur hiker’s tale, peppered with the colorful characters she encounters along the way, and she struggles to find inner peace and stability. Cheryl’s story is so flat-out inspiring that it moved Oprah Winfrey to revive her tremendously popular book club, making Wild its inaugural selection for the launch of Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Readers jumped at the chance to be a part of the new, interactive platform and Wild soon ascended to the #1 spot on The New York Times bestseller list.
Cheryl’s own struggle and survivor story motivates and inspires crowds. A dynamic speaker, her moving rhetoric resonates with audiences of all sizes. Revealed as the voice behind the TheRumpus.net’s beloved “Dear Sugar” column, Cheryl Strayed has been hailed by The New Republic as “the ultimate advice columnist for the Internet age, remaking a genre that has existed, in more or less the same form, since well before Nathanael West’s acerbic novella ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’ first put a face on the figure in 1933.”
Strayed is also the author of The New York Times bestseller Tiny Beautiful Things and the critically acclaimed novel Torch, a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award. Her writing has appeared in The Best American Essays, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Allure, The Missouri Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun and elsewhere. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages around the world.
She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She’s a founding member of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, and serves on their board of directors. Raised in Minnesota, Strayed now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their two sons.
