Elizabeth Gilbert was born in
Waterbury, Connecticut in 1969, and grew up on a small family Christmas
tree farm. She attended New York University, where she studied political
science by day and worked on her short stories by night. After college,
she spent several years traveling around the country, working in bars,
diners and ranches, collecting experiences to transform into fiction.
These explorations eventually formed the basis of her first book _ a
short story collection called
Pilgrims, which was a finalist for the
PEN/Hemingway award, and which moved Annie Proulx to call her ña young
writer of incandescent talentî.
During these early years in New York, she also worked as a journalist
for such publications as Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine. She
was a three-time finalist for The National Magazine Award, and an
article she wrote in GQ about her experiences bartending on the Lower
East Side eventually became the basis for the movie Coyote Ugly.
In 2000, Elizabeth published her first novel, Stern Men (a story of brutal territory wars between two remote fishing islands off the coast of Maine) which was a New York Times Notable Book. In 2002, Elizabeth
published
The Last American Man _ the true story of the modern day
woodsman Eustace Conway. This book, her first work of non-fiction, was a
finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics
Circle Award.
Elizabeth is best known, however for her 2006 memoir Eat Pray Love,
which chronicled her journey alone around the world, looking for solace
after a difficult divorce. The book was an international bestseller,
translated into over thirty languages, with over 10 million copies sold
worldwide. In 2010,
Eat Pray Love was made into a film starring Julia
Roberts. The book became so popular that Time Magazine named Elizabeth
as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
In 2010, Elizabeth published a follow-up to Eat Pray Love called
Committed„a memoir which explored her ambivalent feelings about the
institution of marriage. The book immediately became a Number One New
York Times Bestseller, and was also received with warm critical praise.
As Newsweek wrote,
Committed ñretains plenty of Gilbert's comic
ruefulness and wide-eyed wonderî, and NPR called the book ña rich brew
of newfound insight and wisdom.î
Her latest novel, The Signature of All Things, a sprawling tale of
19th century botanical exploration, will be published in autumn 2013.
Elizabeth Gilbert lives in the small river town of Frenchtown, New
Jersey, where she and her husband (more widely known as ñThat Brazilian
Guy From
Eat Pray Loveî) run a large and delightful imports store called
TWO BUTTONS.
Her website: www.elizabethgilbert.com
