Lecture by Cheryl Strayed

Recorded as part of the Graduate Studies Lecture Series | Writers Series on September 27, 2012, in Timken Lecture Hall on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts

Cheryl Strayed, the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Wild (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), the advice essay collection Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (Vintage Books, 2012), and the novel Torch (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.

Strayed's debut novel, Torch, was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by the Oregonian as one of the top 10 books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest. She has also written the "Dear Sugar" column on TheRumpus.net since March 2010. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Allure, Self, the Missouri Review, Brain, Child, Creative Nonfiction, the Sun, and elsewhere.

The winner of a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Strayed's essays and stories have been published in The Best American Essays, The Best New American Voices, and other anthologies.

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, the filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, and their two children.

Generous support for the CCA Graduate Studies Lecture Series has been provided by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

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