Cheryl Strayed is the bestselling author of Wild, and was the long-time secret voice behind the advice column Dear Sugar. It has been said that Strayed writes from the gut, but I would argue she writes from a place of primordial wisdom that has the effect of punching you in the gut.

– Marie-Hélène Westgate

THE BELIEVER: What was it like to write your very first Dear Sugar column?

CHERYL STRAYED: Terrifying. I wanted to be as funny and brilliant as Steve Almond, since he’d been writing the column until I took over. But who can do that? Not me.

BLVR: Were there any letters that you felt exceeded your capacity to answer them?

CS: I’ve received a few questions from pregnant women who were mid-way through their pregnancies and trying to decide whether they should keep their babies or give them up for adoption. In each case, they were educated women in their twenties with modest financial resources who didn’t intend to get pregnant, but who, from what I could tell in their letters, would be fine mothers should they choose to go that route. Instead of writing a column, I wrote to those women privately, offering words of support. I didn’t write a column because I don’t feel comfortable coming down on one side or another about such a profoundly gigantic decision.

BLVR: When I was reading Tiny Beautiful Things, your collected columns, I fell asleep every night for a month with the book in my arms. Is there a book you’ve cradled through tough times?

CS: Books have always been a great solace to me. Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women is the book I’ve come closest to cradling. When I was in grad school at Syracuse I had to write a long critical paper about one book and that’s the one I chose. When my peers critiqued it one of them told me he thought I gushed too much. He felt like Munro and I should “get a room.” I was stung by his words at the time, but he was right. I love that book with that kind of passion.

BLVR: How different was your experience of the release of Torch, which was your first book and a novel, and that of your memoir, Wild—which exploded into the public six years later?

CS: Both were incredibly exciting, rewarding experiences. Torch was not an international bestseller like Wild is, but it was a success in all the ways a writer can reasonably measure success: I wrote the best book...