Cheryl Strayed Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Cheryl Strayed, author of Torch, discusses the differences between urban culture and rural culture, which serves as a thematic undercurrent throughout her debut novel.

What can you tell us about the genesis of Torch?

I began to write the novel in its most rudimentary form more than ten years ago, when I was in my early twenties, shortly after my mother died — young and of cancer, like the character of Teresa in the novel. My mother's death and my family's subsequent grief, which I fictionalized in Torch, lent itself to the kind of deep character excavation I was compelled to do as a writer. I've always been most interested in exploring relationships and delving into what motivates us, what complicates us, what crushes and saves us and, quite naturally, I've drawn from my own life experiences to do that in both my fiction and my nonfiction. The personal essays I've written for magazines like Allure and Self and the New York Times Magazine and The Sun all explore the same kinds of themes I do in Torch. Having said that, real life is only the raw material from which the story is spun and so the process of writing is not cathartic, but instead creative. Certainly, there are scenes in Torch that are close to my heart, but I didn't write Torch in ...