Tuesday, January 13, 2015
7:30pm
CEMEX Auditorium, Stanford University
Free Admission; priority seating for Stanford students

“Big-hearted, keen-eyed, lyrical, precise … Cheryl Strayed reminds us in every line that if defeat and despair are part of human experience, so are kindness, patience, and transcendence.” –George Saunders

At age 22, Cheryl Strayed found herself shattered by two major life events: her mother’s sudden death from cancer and the end of her young marriage. After hitting rock bottom, she decided to confront her emotional pain by trekking more than 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. In 2012, the story of that journey became the New York Times bestseller Wild, a memoir so rich in honesty, humor, and lyricism that it inspired Oprah Winfrey to restart her book club and Reese Witherspoon to bring it to the screen this winter.

In addition to Wild, Cheryl Strayed is the author of the New York Times bestseller Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of her popular “Dear Sugar” columns for The Rumpus, and the acclaimed novel Torch, a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award. Her writing has also appeared in The Best American Essays, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Allure, The Sun, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and serves on its board of directors.

Join us for an evening with one of the most gifted and fiercely honest storytellers in America today.

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project and Stanford Continuing Studies.