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How Reading Grief Memoirs Helped Cody Delistraty Understand His Loss in New Ways
I read dozens of memoirs about tragedy, loss, and grief in the wake of my mother’s death. I didn’t know how to talk about what I was feeling, exactly, and I didn’t know how to embrace the negative...
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A Reading List of Realistic Portraits of Mothers and Daughters in Literature
When reading about mothers and daughters, we might feel grateful we didn’t have to endure such conflict and trauma. We might long for what we, ourselves, never had. But then again, we might feel seen....
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Revisiting Some Tiny Beautiful Things with Cheryl Strayed
In this episode of Just the Right Book, Roxanne Coady revisits her interview with Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things, whose popular advice column Dear Sugar inspired the podcast...
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Tiny Beautiful Things Does Exactly What We Need It to Do
It’s been a minute since Cheryl Strayed took hold of our heartstrings and pulled, but Tiny Beautiful Things (Hulu, April 7) is here to do just that. This miniseries adaptation would have been...
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The Tiny Beautiful Things trailer is here so let’s hop into the mess.
Dear Sugar fans, it’s here: the Tiny Beautiful Things trailer, starring Kathryn Hahn as Clare (the Cheryl Strayed stand-in), with appearances in flashback by Merritt Wever as her mother and Maggie...
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Cheryl Strayed releases a cut scene from Wild in honor of the memoir’s 10th...
It’s been ten years since the release of Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s bracingly honest memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail as a young adult after her mother’s death with no experience or training—and...
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On Grit: How Cheryl Strayed Learned to Ride Into Battle
You could say that Cheryl Strayed is very adaptable. Her memoir, Wild, was adapted into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. Another book, Tiny Beautiful Things, was adapted for the stage by Nia...
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On the Very Human Importance of Walking: A Reading List
When I need to write, I always walk first. It seems to me that the two are inextricably linked: the pounding of feet on solid ground coaxes reluctant words out of me. It’s not that my brain becomes...
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How to write like Cheryl Strayed.
On this day in 1968, Wild author Cheryl Strayed was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania. At this point, the former Dear Sugar columnist needs no introduction. However, like many authors, Strayed’s success...
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Following the Paths of the Wild-Walking Women of the Past, from Nan Shepherd...
Georgia O’Keeffe once described the vast plains of Texas as “the only place that I ever felt I really belonged… that was my country—terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness.” The many letters in which...
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100 Books That Defined the Decade
This is not a list of the best books of the decade. (This is, if you’re interested.) This is a list of books that, whether bad or good, were in one way or another defining for the last decade in...
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The Call of the Wild: Confronting Nature and Existential Terror
This week on Literary Disco, Julia, Rider, and Tod get wild as they discuss Jack London’s classic portrait of the unforgiving and brutal life of a dog during the Klondike Gold Rush. Additionally, the...
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How the Contemporary Cancer Memoir is Reconfiguring Grief
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s influential book, On Death and Dying. In it, she wrote about grief not as a way to live without someone who has been lost, nor as the...
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What Your New Roommate’s Favorite Book Says About Them
Ah, the first day of college. You obtain a cheery map and find your way to your dorm room. You are either the first or the second one there. Your parents are with you, or they are not. You have...
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On Sexism in Literary Prize Culture
Sometime in 2001, I decided to stop reading books by male authors. After a degree in English Literature and an Honors thesis on Samuel Beckett, I had grown weary of reading books by men about men. I...
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Road Tripping While Female
When I was planning a 16-day, 5,000-mile motorcycle road trip across the country in the company of my friend Emily, the first ever what-the-hell trip for either of us, friends and family expressed deep...
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They Just Dig: On Writing, Coal Mining, and Fear
“Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They...
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Cheryl Strayed is Fed Up with Memoir-Bashing
Cheryl Strayed is a feminist phenomenon, what with her dazzling, bestselling memoir Wild, and her wildly popular Dear Sugar advice column, which is now a bestselling book and a NY Times podcast. But...
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The Ordinary Made Vital and Vivid: On Richard Ford’s Between Them
“With a depth of perception that’s both affectionate and insightful, Ford tells the stories of his parents’ lives and deaths by turn … It’s through this innate desire to know, paired with Ford’s...
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