Cheryl Strayed Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Out Of Line Books

Publication Order of The Best American: Travel Writing Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Cheryl Strayed travel, fiction, and memoir author who was born to Ronald Nyland and Barbara Anne his wife in Spangler, Pennsylvania.

When she was six years old, the family moved to Minnesota from Pennsylvania but things turned sour soon after as her parents divorced and the father she loved so much was no longer in her life.
When she was twelve, her mother remarried and they moved to Aitkin, a rural county where she lived in a house that was on a 40-acre property that lacked running water and electricity.
After graduating from high school in 1986, she worked for the Aitkin Independent Age the local newspaper as a reporter.

Strayed then enrolled at the Saint Paul-based University of St. Thomas but she would ultimately graduate with an English and Women’s Studies degree from the University of Minnesota.
While she was a senior in college, she lost her mother to lung cancer and the grief and pain would be an inspiration in several of her works.

After graduating from college, she worked as an emergency medical technician, waitress, temporary office employee, political organizer, and youth advocate, even as she wrote and traveled across the US.
In 2002, she graduated from Syracuse University with an MFA in fiction writing.

While she is best known for her writing, it was in 2012 that it was revealed that she was the columnist behind Rumpus’ “Dear Sugar” advice column.

She started working there in 2010 when she was requested to take over from legendary contributor Steve Almond who recommended her for the job.

In addition to her books and column, she has written a range of articles in various prestigious publications. Cheryl has written articles for the likes of The Sun Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, The Missouri Review, The New York Times Magazine, Tin House, and Vogue.
She has also won several awards including a Pushcart for the Missouri Review published work “Munro Country.” It happens that Alice Munro is one of her biggest influences and while she was young, she got a letter from the author which was a huge boost to her confidence.
She published “Torch” as her first novel in 2006 and the bestselling novel would also become a critically acclaimed work.

Apart from her writings, she takes the time to give lectures and has attended numerous writing seminars and writer retreats as a guest speaker. She has also been a cohost for the very popular podcast “Dear Sugars” alongside Steve Amond.

In 1988, Cheryl Strayed got married to Marco Littig but the marriage did not last as she divorced him in 1995 just before she embarked on her Pacific Crest Trail hiking quest.

It was after the divorce that she began calling herself Strayed since she liked how great it sounded alongside Cheryl her first name. She would ultimately get married to Brian Lindstrom who was involved in filmmaking and together they moved to Portland, Oregon where they made their home.

Since she had always been active as a feminist agitator, she spent many years as a political organizer during her twenties. During this time, she worked for “Women Against Military Madness” and the “Abortion Rights Council of Minnesota.”
She has also been actively involved in many progressive and feminist causes and has sat on the board of directors for a women in literary arts organization.

Cheryl Strayed’s novel “Wild” got some very good reviews but I never thought I would like it. It is a memoir work penned by a woman who loses her mother then cheats on her husband and starts taking heroin.
To get away from it all, she decides to go on a hiking trip to the Pacific Crest Trail even though she does not have any wilderness or hiking experience.

While it may come with things most people may not relate to such as roughing it, hiking, cheating, drugs, and the loss of a parent, it will still provide a lot of enjoyment.

Even though the crux of the novel is the hike, the author covers a lot of her history and background. What I loved was that she took responsibility for all the bad decisions she made and never once felt sorry for herself.
Even though she sometimes comes out as an idiot, she is a likable idiot who would make for a great friend while out in the outdoors.

It is a great memoir with some excellent writing that leaves you on the edge of your seat with anticipation.

“Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed is a beautiful compilation of advice columns on love and life answered by “Sugar” which is the pseudonym of the author.

Over the course of the book, Sugar responds to letters from people of all religious beliefs, backgrounds, and ages. These are people who are lost, scared, confused, desperate, lonely, and looking for someone who can provide the answers they need.
While Sugar is not a fortune teller who knows everything from looking at a crystal ball, she is very human. Just like anyone, she has also experienced many of the things that the people who write her letters have, which is what makes her advice so good.
It is for this reason that thousands of people wrote letters to her, even if she never experienced what they were going through, she never put them down or made them feel wrong for their actions.

It is that act of making her readers feel good and understood that made these people feel that someone cared. For this reason, they kept writing letters to Sugar, and this made the column one of the most popular advice columns over the years.

Chery Strayed’s novel “Two Women Walk into a Bar” is an interesting account of the author’s intriguing relationship with her mother-in-law.

Everything comes into focus when Brian and his wife Cheryl are informed that his mother only had several weeks to live and would have to go live in the seniors complex’s assisted living section.

For the most part, it is an end-of-life story from Joan’s perspective and the feelings that it brought up in her daughter-in-law. Still, it comes with a certain universality to it, even if it follows the lives of Cheryl Strayed and her mother-in-law.
Between Joan telling Cheryl that there is no greater love than that of son and mother and Strayed refusing to call her mother, there were many things that resulted in a wide chasm between the two.

Cheryl recalls that there were several occasions when her mother-in-law hurt her feelings and believes that maybe she would have been more pleased with a different type of daughter-in-law.

Ultimately, they reach some kind of understanding at the bedside of her mother-in-law when she is a few days from death.