“In the mornings, my pain was magnified by about a thousand. In the morning there weren’t only those sad facts about my life. Now there was also the additional fact that I was a pile of shit.”

American writer and podcast host

Cheryl Strayed is an American writer and podcast host. She wrote the novel Torch and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Tiny Beautiful Things, and Brave Enough. Her best-known book, Wild, tells the story of her 1995 hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. It became an international bestseller and was adapted into the 2014 film Wild, which received an Academy Award nomination. Her work often draws on personal experience and the search for repair, endurance, and self-understanding.