Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert (born July 18, 1969) is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold over 12 million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. The book was also made into a film of the same name in 2010. Early life, education, and career Gilbert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1969. Her father, John Gilbert, was a chemical engineer at Uniroyal; her mother, Carole, was a nurse and established a Planned Parenthood clinic. When Gilbert was four, her parents bought a Christmas tree farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. The family lived in the country with no neighbors; they did not own a television or record player. Consequently, the family read a great deal, and Gilbert and her older sister Catherine Gilbert Murdock entertained themselves by writing books and plays. Gilbert has said that her parents were not hippies but modern pioneers, "My parents are the only people I've ever known who made their own goat's-milk yogurt and voted for Reagan twice. That's a Venn diagram that doesn't include anyone else." Gilbert attended New York University. She resisted taking literature classes and writing workshops and stated in an interview, "I never thought that the best place for me to find my voice would be in a room filled with twenty other people trying to find their voices. I was a big moralist about it, actually. I felt that if I was writing on my own, I didn't need a class, and if I wasn't writing on my own, I didn't deserve one." Instead of attending graduate school, Gilbert decided to create her own education through work and travel.