Author Reads At Bend Public Library
Posted By: Liz Goodrich
Date Posted: 3/1/2007
Deschutes Public Library is pleased to welcome award-winning writer Cheryl Strayed. Strayed will read from her debut novel Torch and answer questions from the audience Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 6:30PM at the Bend Public Library. This program is free and open to the public.
Torch tells the story of Teresa Rae Wood, a local celebrity in the town of Midden, Minnesota. Her popular radio show, Modern Pioneers!, a kind of hippie Prairie Home Companion, is an eternal embarrassment to her two almost-grown children, Claire and Joshua, and a source of amused pride to her common-law husband, Bruce. When Teresa summons Claire and Joshua home unexpectedly, they are floored by her devastating news: Teresa, only thirty-eight, is dying of cancer; seven weeks later she is gone. Exploring each character's distinct way of coping with Teresa’s death, Strayed shows her deep understanding of the emotional discord, desperation, and moments of levity, that accompany the grief of losing a loved one. Torch reveals both the beauty and the terror of learning how to keep living.
Strayed's award-winning stories and essays have appeared in more than a dozen magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, Allure, Self, The Sun, and Nerve. Widely anthologized, her work is featured in The Best New American Voices 2003 and has been selected twice for The Best American Essays. Raised in Minnesota, Strayed has worked as a political organizer for women's advocacy groups and was an outreach worker at a sexual violence center in Minneapolis. She holds an MFA from the Syracuse University Graduate Creative Writing Program. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and their two children.
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