Cheryl Strayed (born September 17, 1968 in Spangler, Pennsylvania) is a novelist and essayist living in Portland, Oregon. Her debut novel, TORCH, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2006. Her essays have been published in several magazines, including The Washington Post Magazine and The New York Times Magazine, and have been selected twice for inclusion in The Best American Essays (2000 and 2003 editions). TORCH was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of 2006 by writers living in the Pacific Northwest.
Strayed received her BA from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University.
Her writing is award winning.[1] She ofttimes writes about her mother.[2]