Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of ten books, including Eat Pray Love and Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, which together have sold over 25 million copies worldwide.

Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, she grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm and went on to study political science at New York University, working on her short stories by night. After college she spent several years traveling the country, working in bars, diners and ranches, collecting experiences to turn into fiction. Those years led to her first book, the story collection Pilgrims, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award. Annie Proulx called her "a young writer of incandescent talent." She also worked as a journalist for publications including Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine, and was a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. Her GQ article about bartending on the Lower East Side became the basis for the film Coyote Ugly.

Her first novel, Stern Men, was a New York Times Notable Book. The Last American Man, her first nonfiction book, tells the true story of the woodsman Eustace Conway and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her 2006 memoir Eat Pray Love, which follows her journey around the world in search of solace after a difficult divorce, was translated into over thirty languages and made into a 2010 film starring Julia Roberts. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Her later books include the memoir Committed, the 19th-century botanical novel The Signature of All Things, Big Magic, and the 1940s New York theater novel City of Girls. Her memoir All the Way to the River tells of her friendship and love with Rayya Elias, and of addiction and recovery. It was an instant New York Times bestseller and an Oprah's Book Club pick.