I'm a member of our legal team.

And I somehow got tricked into doing this event because I was

so excited to meet Cheryl.

For those of you who don't know, Cheryl Strayed is a New

York Times best-selling author.

She had two books come out in the last year, "Wild," which

was her memoir of her three-month solo trip up the

Pacific Crest Trail of hiking more than 1,000 miles.

She also had a book come out called "Tiny Beautiful

Things," which is a compendium, I don't know, a

collection of her columns that she wrote as Dear Sugar.

And "Dear Sugar" was an advice column on the Rumpus.

Still is.

CHERYL STRAYED: Yes.

CHRISTINE: But, sort of advice column that transcended the

bounds of advice columns.

She's also the author of a critically acclaimed novel

called "Torch." And she has an MFA from Syracuse University

and a PA from the University of Minnesota.

And she lives in Portland with two kids.

CHERYL STRAYED: And my husband.

CHRISTINE: And her husband.

CHERYL STRAYED: And our three cats.

CHRISTINE: Three cats?

CHERYL STRAYED: Three, yeah.

CHRISTINE: That's a lot of cats.

CHERYL STRAYED: That's a lot of cats.

CHRISTINE: So welcome.

We're so excited to have you.

CHERYL STRAYED: Thank you.

It's great to be here.

And thank you all for coming.

Oh, thanks.

CHRISTINE: So, we had lunch today.

And Cheryl has seen all of the Google perks.

So I think the next step, Laslo, is maybe that we need

an artist in residence.

CHERYL STRAYED: Yeah.

We're thinking.

I could split my time, artist in residence

and hiker in residence.

CHRISTINE: We have plenty of trails around here.

CHERYL STRAYED: That's right.

That's right.

Somebody needs to take you guys on those trails.

CHRISTINE: So, the last year of your life, I think, must be

something that you couldn't have anticipated.

Did you anticipate that both "Tiny Beautiful Things" and

"Wild" would have exploded like this when you were

writing them and publishing them?

CHERYL STRAYED: No.

And yet, there's a longer answer to that question.

It has to do with essentially what I had to do along the way

as I became a writer.

When I was in my early 20s and I had all of these ambitions

to be a writer and was really studying the writer's craft

and writing my first stories, I had these grandiose ideas

about what it meant to be a writer that I think a lot of

times people early in their careers as writers they think,

OK, I'm gonna write this book.

I am gonna be on the best seller list, or I'll be a

famous author.

And then the more you work, the more you come to

understand that you really cannot measure

success in that way.

Your book being on the best seller list is not an accurate

gauge of success when you're a literary artist.

And I say that with great confidence because I know so

many fantastic writers who are writing beautiful work worthy

of our attention that they don't ever

really get our attention.

And so, I had to really come to grips with that pretty

early on and say the way I was going to measure success as a

writer was to always do the best work I could, to put my

full self into it, to do my work, to study the craft, and

to write fearlessly with great vulnerability, and

then come what may.

What's so fascinating to me is "Wild" would be the exact same

book whether two people had read it or two million people

had read it.

That book what exist.

I would not have done anything differently.

But of course what happens when two million people have

read your book is it becomes something else.

It goes from being my book to your book.

And one of the things that has happened over and over again,

I've talked to thousands of people around the world in

this last year.

And they all tell me their relationship to the book,

their stories about the book, the pieces of it that

intrigued them or infuriated them or whatever

the book did to them.

And so they've sort of made it theirs.

CHRISTINE: Your writing, I think, is so emotional.

And it's so honest, I think, so raw about experiences that

happened to you.

It's seems like you're very, very forthcoming about things.

And I think I'm curious as to what it's like as a writer to

have something that's so close to your heart that then goes

out into the world and sort of morphs into its own beast?

What is that like?

CHERYL STRAYED: The couple months right

before "Wild" came out--

I'm just gonna set this down.

The couple months before "Wild"

came out, I was terrified.

I had been writing the "Dear Sugar" column.

I'd written essays that had been read widely that were

very vulnerable and raw.

But I had never published a book that was essentially my

heart on the page.

I mean, my first book, "Torch," is my heart on the

page, but it's fiction.

And so even though there are all these pieces of "Torch"

that are, in fact, very true, there was this screen between

me and the reader where I could say,

well, this is a fiction.

"Wild," I was saying the opposite.

I was saying this is me.

This is my story.

If somebody doesn't like the book-- and I

mean, I've seen this.

I try not to read--

I try not to Google myself.

Because really for a writer, that's a dangerous prospect.

And I get these Google alerts every day.

And I try to sort of skim and not really actually read what

people have written about me.

And people have written all kinds of really nice

things about me.

And then some people have written really nasty

things about me.

And what's happening is that character in that book is me.

And so if they don't like the book, they think

they don't like me.

Or if they do like the book, they think they like me.

And, a couple of nights ago I was giving a reading.

And afterwards, this woman came up with her book and she

said, I'm so glad I came tonight.

And I said think you.

And she said I didn't think I was gonna like you at all.

And I was like, oh, thank you.

And I didn't even want to explore what she

meant by that because--

What she was saying is you in person, I like you in person.

But I think she had some misgivings

about me on the page.

And so this is an incredibly scary thing.

And yet it's the writer's work.

It's the whole deal.

Not just the writer, any artist.

I walked past some paintings when we were coming in here.

And that is this person taking a great amount of risk and

presenting it to you.

And you get to say whether you like it or you don't like it.

And so you're either accepting or rejecting really something

that is this person's like greatest passion.

And, it's a big deal.

And I had to really come to grips with the fact that like

there's never been a book written that everyone loves.

I'm OK with the fact that some people hate the book and some

people love the book.

But, I've had to step back from it.

CHRISTINE: One of the craziest things that I think must have

happened to you--

this is from my perspective, of course-- but I understand

that Reese Witherspoon requested your book before it

was even published and then optioned it essentially before

it was out on the presses.

And so, now there's going to be a big screen movie of your

life, of an incredibly raw part of your life that is also

going to be made in Hollywood.

And letting go of that control must be something difficult to

contemplate?

CHERYL STRAYED: Just last week, I read the script.

So, you're right.

About three months before "Wild" came out,

I got a film agent.

And in just all right in one day, the film agent said,

there are three women in Hollywood under the age of 40

who can get a movie made.

And they knew that the challenge of "Wild" is the

main character is a woman.

And there are a bunch of men in the book, but none of them

are really main characters.

And so that's already problematic.

Hollywood doesn't want to make a movie featuring a woman.

And so, right away my film agent said, so we need to find

an actress who feels passionately about the book

and will take it on as her project.

And she said, I just was chatting with Reese

Witherspoon, and she said she'd loved to read your book

over the weekend.

So this was a Friday.

Would you let Reese read it?

And I was like sure.

I mean, why not?

CHRISTINE: Yeah.

I guess.

CHERYL STRAYED: And so, and then I lit a candle--

which I don't necessarily believe that lighting a candle

has any actual impact on the world-- but I light a candle

and every time I passed it or looked at it I'd say, Reese.

And, I can't believe I'm telling you this actually.

I've only said this two times now.

This is the second time.

So, it's 'cause you guys gave me ice cream at lunch.

CHRISTINE: Really good ice cream.

CHERYL STRAYED: And so then Monday, my cell phone rang.

And it was my agent saying, Reese loves it and she wants

to option it and she wants to talk to you.

And so, Reese and I just had this hour long conversation

where she just told me everything she understood

about the book, everything she felt about the book.

And I could see right away that she got it, that she was

really deeply connected to the story I was telling.

And then she was sharing with me all parts of herself as an

artist, too, as an actress, what she could

bring to the story.

Because that's the deal is it is gonna be strange when I see

the movie and there's Reese and she's me.

But it's also I've had to let that go.

Because I wrote the book.

Nobody can change the book.

That was my creation.

The film isn't my creation.

And so Reese is gonna have to make it hers in order for it

to succeed.

I really think that anything that is made with artistic

intentions, it has to come from a core place.

It has to come from an authentic place.

And so she can't be trying to sort of mimic me in the course

of making the film.

So I have just great confidence in her.

I think she's really smart and really kind of--

and I've met her and had long conversations with her.

I couldn't be more thrilled.

And she hired--

I didn't want anything to do with the script, so she hired

Nick Hornby, the writer Nick Hornby--

CHRISTINE: [INAUDIBLE]

CHERYL STRAYED: --to write the script.

And so then I went to England in January for the "Wild"

launch there, and I hung out with Nick for several days.