Educated at New York University, Elizabeth Gilbert hails from an ascetic childhood in rural Connecticut. Fearless reporting skills and an abiding appreciation for working-class values have colored her writing from the beginning. Meanwhile, a persistent longing to understand the world and her place in it have made her not merely a writer, but an explorer.  Gilbert worked in a Philadelphia diner, on a western ranch, and in a New York City bar to scrape together the funds to travel: “to create experiences to write about, gather landscapes and voices.” Her efforts weren't wasted: Gilbert's writing was published in Harper's Bazaar, Spin, and the New York Times Magazine. Her work in Spin caught the attention of editors at GQ, and she became a stalwart at that publication, producing vivid, provocative pieces that soon grew into books and even a film: 2000's Coyote Ugly. Gilbert was a Finalist for the National Magazine Award, and her work was anthologized in Best American Writing 2001.

Gilbert’s first book, a wide-ranging collection of short fiction called Pilgrims (1998), was a New York Times Most Notable Book and won the Ploughshares prize, among many other honors. Her first novel, Stern Men (2000), won the Kate Chopin Award in 2001. Her third book, The Last American Man (2002), which compellingly explores America’s long-standing intrigue with the pioneer lifestyle, was a Finalist for the National Book Award. For Gilbert, who built her journalism career writing for men’s magazines and creating powerful portraits of epic, unusual men, it is more than a little ironic to be dismissed by some critics as a writer of “chick lit.”

"I think my gift, far beyond whatever gifts that I have as a writer, my gift as a human is that I can make friends with people very quickly,” she told interviewer Frank Bures at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. “Everything I learned about being a journalist I learned by being a bartender. The most exquisite lesson of all is that people will tell you anything. Want to. There’s no question you can’t ask if your intention is not hostile. And it’s not like entrapment; it’s more like a gorgeous revelation. People want to tell the story that they have.”

With Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert attracted an adoring international audience. The courage and humor that mark Eat, Pray, Love make it the kind of book that people keep on their nightstands for years, pages flagged, passages highlighted, margins filled with the reader’s own thoughts and revelations. In 2010, Eat, Pray, Love was made into a feature film starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem—an experience Gilbert has called “surreal,” “amazing,” and “touching.”

In 2010, Gilbert published Committed: A Love Story, the breathlessly anticipated follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love. Committed is a memoir of what happens after “happily ever after.” In Gilbert's case, she must overcome her fears and anxieties about marriage in order to, in her words, “keep a relationship with my sweetheart and live with him in America.” Devotees of Eat, Pray, Love will recall "Felipe", the dashing Brazilian-born man for whom Gilbert falls at the end of the book. In reality, upon returning to the United States from a trip abroad, Gilbert and "Felipe" were confronted by the Department of Homeland Security and told in no uncertain terms that, for himto stay in the U.S. with Gilbert, they would have to marry. Both divorced and reluctant to marry again, they balked. But, unwilling to let each other go, they embarked on several months of world travel, during which Gilbert began studying the social and cultural history of marriage. Part memoir, part (in Gilbert's words) “academic contemplation,” Committed is full of Gilbert’s trademark humor, sparkling prose, and warm, intimate voice—and she is quite grateful to be forever liberated from the pressure to write the follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love.

Gilbert makes her home in a Victorian house in New Jersey, where she writes and owns an import store, Two Buttons, with her husband. Gilbert recently finished a new novel, The Signature of All Things, to be published in the fall of 2013. For more information about Elizabeth Gilbert and her work, please go to www.elizabethgilbert.com.

Selected Writings

• The Signature of All Things (Viking, 2013)
  
• Committed (Viking, 2010)
• Eat, Pray, Love (Viking, 2006)
• The Last American Man (Viking, 2002)
• Stern Men (Houghton Mifflin, 2000)
• Pilgrims (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)

Awards

2006 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Eat, Pray, Love
2002 Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award, The Last American Man
2002 Finalist, National Book Award, The Last American Man
2002 Library Journal Best Books of the Year, The Last American Man
1998 Pushcart Prize, Pilgrims
1998 Best First Fiction Award, Paris Review, The Southern Review & Ploughshares for Pilgrims

Media

Watch Elizabeth Gilbert's Speech at O the Oprah Magazine's 10th Anniversary

TED Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert suggests a new way to think about creativity:



Elizabeth Gilbert on the Paul Holdengraber Show