A Wild Life
Cheryl Strayed
Thursday, 15 Sep 2016 at 7:00 pm – Stephens Auditorium
No tickets - General admission seating - Doors open at 6:15Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. The book and 2014 movie adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon recounts how at age 22, shattered by her mother's death and the end of her young marriage, Strayed decides to confront her emotional pain by trekking more than 1,000 miles from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon-Washington border. Now in her forties, Strayed is the cohost with Steve Almond of Dear Sugar Radio, an advice podcast for the lost, lonely and heartsick produced by WBUR Radio. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University. Her other books include the advice essay collection Tiny Beautiful Things and the novel Torch. She is also a regular columnist for the New York Time Book Review.
No podcast will be available for this event.
In her memoir Wild Cheryl Strayed describes the sometimes harrowing, other times hilarious stories behind her solo wilderness trek on the Pacific Crest Trail and the personal journey that led her there. In this talk, Strayed will discuss what she learned about how we bear the unbearable, how we move from grief and anger to acceptance, and how we keep walking even when it seems impossible to stand.
Photo credit: Joni Kabana
Cosponsored By:
- Ames Public Library Friends Foundation
- Humanities Iowa
- MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment
- Pearl Hogrefe Visiting Writer Series
- University Library
- Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)
Stay for the entire event, including the brief question-and-answer session that follows the formal presentation. Most events run 75 minutes.
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Lecture Etiquette
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