Cheryl Strayed wrote her first novels books Torch which was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in February 2006 to positive critical reviews.
The 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. In October 2012, Torch was re-issued by Vintage Books with a new introduction by Strayed.
She worked as a long-time feminist activist in her twenties and as a political organizer for the Abortion Rights Council of Minnesota, which is now called Minnesota NARAL, and also for Women Against Military Madness, a feminist peace and justice nonprofit organization in Minneapolis–Saint Paul.
She served on the first board of directors for Vida: Women in Literary Arts and has been active in many feminist and progressive causes. 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.
It has been translated into 30 languages. The week of its publication, Wild debuted at number 7 on the New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover non-fiction. In June 2012, Oprah Winfrey announced that Wild was her first selection for her new Oprah’s Book Club 2.0.
The next month Wild reached number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, a spot it held for seven consecutive weeks. 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. Wild won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Oregon Book Award.
In July 2012, Vintage Books published Strayed’s third book: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. The book debuted in the advice and self-help category on the New York Times Best Seller list at number 5 and it has also been published internationally.
Tiny Beautiful Things is a selection of Strayed’s popular “Dear Sugar” advice columns, which she wrote for no pay for the literary website The Rumpus from 2010 to 2012.
Her fourth book, is known as Brave Enough, was published in the United States by Knopf on October 27, 2015, and in the United Kingdom a week later by Atlantic Books. It debuted in the advice and self-help category on the New York Times Best Seller list at number 10.
