We are ECSTATIC to announce that author Cheryl Strayed is Sugar!
Her forthcoming memoir, Wild, is our March Rumpus Book Club selection! (Click here to join.)
But that’s not all: we’ll be linking to numerous profiles, coverage of last night’s San Francisco Sugar Party, and more, right here.
You know Sugar. It’s time to meet Cheryl Strayed:
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“Becoming Dear Sugar,” by Byard Duncan (The Bay Citizen)
“Dear Sugar’s True Identity,” by Sally Errico (The New Yorker Book Bench)
“Into the Wild with Dear Sugar, aka Cheryl Strayed,” by Sara Faye Lieber (Paste)
“Cheryl Strayed Revealed as Dear Sugar Columnist,” by Jason Boog (GalleyCat)
“The Literati’s Anonymous Advice Columnist Unmasks Herself,” by Jen Doll (The Atlantic Wire)
“Strayed Comes Out As Rumpus ‘Sugar’ Columnist,” by Claire Kirch (Publishers Weekly)
“Portland writer Cheryl Strayed reveals she is popular advice columnist ‘Dear Sugar,’” by Jeff Baker (The Oregonian)
“It can now be told: Cheryl Strayed is ‘Dear Sugar,’” by Laurie Hertzel (Star Tribune)
“Walking the Walk: An Interview with Cheryl Strayed, Author of Wild,” by Antonina Jedrzejczak (Vogue)
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“SUGAR’S COMING OUT PARTY: An oasis where radical empathy is enforced,” by Evan Karp (Litseen). Includes video of the entire SF event, taken by Charles Kruger!
“Sugar’s (Illustrated) Coming Out Party!” by Wendy MacNaughton (We’re allowed to link to ourselves, right?)
“‘Dear Sugar’ Has a Coming-Out Party in San Francisco,” by Matt Davis (The Awl)
“Sugar Love: Dispatches from A Coming Out Party,” by Judy Clement Wall (Used Furniture)
“Scenes From the ‘Dear Sugar’ Coming Out Party,” by Byard Duncan (The Bay Citizen)
“Dear Sugar: Sold-Out Coming Out Party Opposite of Selling Out,” by Evan Karp (Electric Literature)
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Vogue has posted an excerpt of Wild!
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Here are some of our favorite (non-Sugar) essays by Cheryl, all of which we highly recommend:
“Munro Country” (which won a Pushcart)
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Did you miss Sugar’s event in San Francisco? Fear not, Housing Works and McNally Jackson are hosting “A WILD Night” in New York City!
Click here to pre-order Wild.
For more Sugar-y goodness follow Cheryl Strayed on Twitter.
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Author photo by Joni Kabana.
19 responses
Feck yeah! Congrats on coming out. Rooting and reading evermore.
it’s funny, I always pictured you as a blonde, Sugar.
I love this. It makes perfect sense.
AWESOME.
i’d known about cheryl strayed for months(so giddy when i found out and honestly, do right that wrong) but oh my god steve almond, why did nobody tell me? 😀
Haha, Steve Almond was the first Sugar. Makes so much sense in hindsight.
I am a little too proud of myself for keeping that secret for about a year-and-a-half. I am otherwise a terrible yenta.
Rumpus could you pretty pretty please post some video from the coming out party? please?
Magnificent writer. Spectacular woman.
That’s so funny. I’m not familiar with Cheryl’s work but I follow Sugar like maniac. She’s EXACTLY how I pictured her.
As I was scrolling through previous essays she’d written I realized that I had read an essay by her when I was in college. I had carried this story of her mother with me for years, I never forget the way the writer wrote about it. By re-reading the first paragraph of “The Love of My Life” today, I realized I knew it was her, even before I knew who she really was. This is reassuring to me. I hope Cheryl knows that there is not a small crowd in the corner cheering for her, there is an entire stadium of us who applaud her work, her ability to make everyone ask themselves, can I be better? Can I do the hard work that it will take to make myself a better person? And all of us reading her words on our computer screens, on the pages of her books, we’re all cheering yes. Yes, we can.
Goddamn amazing. I was pretty sure Sugar = Cheryl Strayed, but only for the past few days, and I am a huge fan of Cheryl Strayed already, so this is just so much awesome for me. Wish I could’ve been at the event. Thanks for the link round-up!
Is there a link to video of the whole night? I keep finding just the musical performance part @the Litseen site… would love to see the whole event. -s
Sarah just click the >| button at the bottom of the video to advance through the “chapters” of the whole evening. Enjoy!
Of course, it’s you. Who else could it be? <3
Yay! Thanks, Julie!
I love you, Sugar! And glad you finally came out. 🙂
About The Oregonian’s Jeff Baker’s reference to the Sugar children:
Q: Will your kids not read “Wild” (and your columns) “until they’re like, 32”?
A: Not even close!
They’re public and they’re published and they’re OK. They will in-form your children’s lives, even as they embarrass them as adolescents.
They’re long-form truth, with all your guts, rather than the “truthiness” people claim they pull out from the gut but may actually be the wishful thinking of the moment.
Long-form truth as published writing. Not short bursts forever littering the search engines like from Facebook, Twitter. A whole novel, a memoir, a whole column reply much longer than the question asked you, because you included what the asker had not said, included both your and their life stories, the whole truth as best you know it. Nothing distorted, nothing further damaging, nothing to fear. The kids are alright. And your secrets are safe even out.
I do a lot of writing too, and what may happen in late adolescence is that (good) teachers encourage their writing skills by starting with their life vignettes– their own version of course. At first only my daughter’s teacher saw them. At the same time, I did not yet widely circulate some online pieces about what I’d learned from our family experiences. Then, she asked for my help in editing one of her stories (she meant proofing), and included the admission that she wasn’t yet showing me one other one. Of course I felt a bit disturbed by distortions in her story of life with us parents, but as I started doing what any proofreader would do, I finally laughed to myself and appreciated the circle completing. So I told her that she had my permission to use all her perspectives on our lives since the stories are her life too, and that I would probably start working my parenting stories into blogs and essays lots more people wanted to see too. Even-steven, OK honey? We’re both doing composition, right? She snorted in protest that it’s not a fair fight — meaning that I’ve had more practice as an artist, and her friends are less mature than mine. In time she no longer hid her writing either, and even worked some of her complaints into positive and compelling college app essays.
You’ve given your family the power of the “whole story” too. Oh, I admit to an exception for those little events that will wait until that age when I see her viewpoint is more of a parent than an only child; some perspectives are only hard-earned.
I’m an awful secret keeper, but happy that I was part of the people who managed to keep their mouths shut… I hope this is the beginning of even more good things for you Cheryl – both personally and professionally!
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