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Biography
Cheryl Strayed's critically acclaimed novel Torch, was published by Hougton Mifflin in 2006. Torch was a finalist
for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books by Pacific Northwest
authors. Strayed's award-winning stories and essays have appeared in over a dozen magazines, journals, and
anthologies, including twice in the Best American Essays.
Born in western Pennsylvania in 1968, Strayed spent most of her formative years—from the age of five until her
mid-twenties—in Minnesota. Her novel, Torch, takes place in the fictional town of Midden, Minnesota, based on her
hometown of McGregor. "It's my literary landscape; my spiritual home," she says. "No matter how far I wander, I
often travel back to Minnesota when I sit down to write."
Torch is a novel about big things--about love and loss and grief and redemption—but it takes place on the small
stage: centering on the lives of one working class family as they struggle with the illness and subsequent death of
one of its members—the mother. "It's the story I had to write. The story of my heart," says Strayed, who lost her
own mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, to cancer at a young age. Though Torch began as an autobiographical novel, it soon
became almost entirely fictional as Strayed wrote it. "Not surprisingly, the characters took on lives of their own
as I got deeper into the story and I happily gave way to that. I ended up with something bigger, more meaningful, and
in many ways more true than had I stuck to autobiography."
Not that she is averse to writing autobiographically. Her personal essays, "Heroin/e" and "The Love of My Life,"
were both selected for inclusion in the prestigious Best American Essays collections (in 2000 and 2003 respectively)
and she has published in magazines such as the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Allure,
DoubleTake and The Sun. "I love the freedom to write both fiction and nonfiction. In each I draw from the other:
in my fiction I mine the actual events of my life—often changing them entirely by the time the piece is finished—and
in my essays I utilize the writing craft of a fiction writer, paying close attention to character and dialogue
and setting to structure the piece so that I'm not just relating an interesting story, but rather crafting a work
of art that has meaning beyond the personal or confessional."
Though Strayed grew up in a household that didn't necessarily encourage an interest in the literary arts, she knew
she wanted to be a writer since she was a child, before, as she puts it, "I knew that anyone even could be a writer—I
assumed they were all dead." An avid reader, she began writing stories at age seven and never stopped. "My first
real short story was called 'Murder on the Midnight Express.' It featured a talking parrot named Poncho. My teacher
showed it to a police officer friend of hers and he wrote 'nice job' at the top. I have it still."
After graduating from McGregor High School in 1986, Strayed went on to earn a bachelor's degree in English and
women's studies from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. It was there, by reading great works and honing
her own budding craft in workshops, that she found her true calling as a writer. After graduating, she worked a
number of jobs—as a waitress, a political organizer, a youth advocate, pregnancy prevention counselor, and an EMT,
among other things—and wrote on the side. "I published a bit, won a few grants and residencies, and wrote whenever I
could." Still, it wasn't enough. "I'd put off going to graduate school because I felt it was important to develop
my writing craft on my own. I think that was a wise decision, but by the time I turned thirty, I realized what I
needed in order to finish a project as big as a novel was sheer time to focus solely on my writing. Graduate school
offered me that."
Strayed earned her MFA in fiction writing at Syracuse University in 2002. Her short story, "Good," which she wrote
while a student at SU, was selected by Joyce Carol Oates for inclusion in The Best New American Voices 2003.
She lives in Portland, Oregon with her filmmaker husband, Brian Lindstrom, and their two children.
Read the interview with Cheryl about her new book, Torch!
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