Cheryl Strayed

Strayed was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania, the second daughter of Barbara Anne "Bobbi" (née Young; 1945–1991) and Ronald Nyland.

From age three to six, Strayed was sexually abused by her paternal grandfather.

At age six, she moved with her family from Pennsylvania to Chaska, Minnesota.

Her parents divorced soon after and Cheryl's father left her life.

When Cheryl was 12 her mother married Glenn Lambrecht, and the following year the family moved to rural Aitkin County, where they lived in a house that they had built themselves on 40 acres.

The house did not have electricity or running water for the first few years.

Indoor plumbing was installed after Strayed moved away for college.

Strayed also has two half-siblings from her father's second marriage, with whom she connected only after Wild was published.

Cheryl Strayed (née Nyland; born September 17, 1968) is an American writer and podcast host.

In 1986, at the age of 17, Strayed graduated from McGregor High School in McGregor, Minnesota.

In March 1991, when Strayed was a senior in college, her mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45.

Strayed has described this loss as her "genesis story."

She has written about her mother's death and her grief in each of her books and several of her essays.

She has also written about her experiences dabbling in heroin use in her twenties.

Strayed has worked as a waitress, youth advocate, political organizer, temporary office employee, and emergency medical technician throughout her 20s and early 30s, while writing and often traveling around the United States.

Wild, the story of Strayed's 1995 hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, is an international bestseller and was adapted into the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Wild.

It details her 1,100-mile hike in 1995 on the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon–Washington state line and tells the story of the personal struggles that compelled her to take the hike.

The week of its publication, Wild debuted at number 7 on the New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover non-fiction.

During the summer of 1997, Strayed worked as a newspaper reporter for her hometown county weekly, the Aitkin Independent Age in Aitkin, Minnesota.

She loosely based the fictional Coltrap County in her novel Torch on McGregor and Aitkin County.

Strayed attended her freshman year of college at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, but by her sophomore year, she transferred to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree, with a double major in English and Women's Studies.

Her work has been selected three times for inclusion in The Best American Essays ("Heroin/e" in the 2000 edition, "The Love of My Life" in the 2003 edition, and "My Uniform" in the 2015 edition).

In 2002, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from Syracuse University, where she was mentored by writers George Saunders, Arthur Flowers, Mary Gaitskill, and Mary Caponegro.

Strayed writes the Dear Sugar advice column, which is published on her Substack newsletter.

She has written four books: the novel Torch (2006) and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) and Brave Enough (2015).

Strayed's first book, the novel Torch, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in February 2006 to positive critical reviews.

Torch was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of 2006 by writers living in the Pacific Northwest.

She first began writing the column on the website The Rumpus starting in March 2010, when the column's originator Steve Almond asked her to take over for him.

She wrote the column anonymously until February 14, 2012, when she revealed her identity as "Sugar" at a "Coming Out Party" hosted by the Rumpus at the Verdi Club in San Francisco.

In addition to her column and books, Strayed has published essays in The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, The Missouri Review, and The Sun Magazine.

In October 2012, Torch was re-issued by Vintage Books with a new introduction by Strayed.

Strayed's second book, the memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, was published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf on March 20, 2012.

In June 2012, Oprah Winfrey announced that Wild was her first selection for her new Oprah's Book Club 2.0.

Winfrey discussed Wild in her video announcement of the new club and interviewed Strayed for a two-hour broadcast of her show Super Soul Sunday on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

The next month Wild reached number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, a spot it held for seven consecutive weeks.

Strayed was the guest editor of The Best American Essays 2013 and The Best American Travel Writing 2018.

She won a Pushcart Prize for her essay "Munro Country," which was originally published in The Missouri Review.

The essay is about a letter Strayed received from Alice Munro when she was a young writer, and Munro's influence on Strayed's writing.

The paperback edition of Wild, published by Vintage Books in March 2013, spent 126 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.

The book has also been a bestseller around the world—in the UK, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and elsewhere, and has been translated into 37 languages.