"Strayed's memoir Wild [is] as loose and sexy and dark as an early Lucinda Williams song. It's got a punk spirit and makes an earthy and American sound.” —The New York Times

“Big Magic is a celebration of a creative life… Gilbert’s love of creativity is infectious, and there’s a lot of great advice in this sunny book… Gilbert doesn’t just call for aspiring artists to speak their truth, however daffy that may appear to others; she is showing them how.” —Washington Post

After a 1,000-mile trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed had a story to tell. The result was her bestselling memoir Wild, a sometimes harrowing, other times hilarious, tale of her journey from loss to recovery after she found herself shattered by two major life events. 

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat Pray Love was also a bestseller that famously chronicled the year Gilbert spent traveling the world after a shattering divorce and catapulted its author from a respected but little-recognized writer to a woman Oprah Winfrey has called a “rock star author.” 

Both memoirs, which also became hit Hollywood films, hit home to thousands of women around the world who saw their lives reflected on the page and found in both books solace, redemption and a model of how they, too, could rebuild their lives. Strayed and Gilbert continue to publish and share their thoughts with fans around the world. Strayed is the voice behind The Rumpus’s popular “Dear Sugar” column and Gilbert is the author of another memoir, Committed: A Love Story, the follow-up to Eat Pray Love; a novel, The Signature of all Things; and a nonfiction treatise Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. We are delighted to have them together in conversation.