[close] Elizabeth Gilbert was born in 1969 in Connecticut. She grew up on a small family tree farm, with her sister, novelist and historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock (author of Dairy Queen, the first in a series for teens). She attended New York University and graduated in 1991 with a BA in Political Science.

In addition to writing books, she has worked steadily as a journalist. Throughout much of the 1990’s she was on staff at SPIN Magazine, where she chronicled diverse individuals and subcultures, covering everything from rodeo's Buckle Bunnies (reprinted in The KGB Bar Reader) to China’s headlong construction of the Three Gorges Dam. In 1999, Elizabeth began working for GQ magazine, where her profiles of extraordinary men — from singers Hank Williams III and Tom Waits (reprinted in The Tom Waits Reader) to quadriplegic athlete Jim Maclaren – earned her three National Magazine Award Nominations, as well as repeated appearances in the “Best American” magazine writing anthologies. She has also written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Real Simple, Allure, Travel and Leisure and O, the Oprah Magazine (where her memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" was excerpted in March 2006.) She has been a contributor to the Public Radio show "This American Life", and — perhaps most proudly — has several times shown up at John Hodgman's Little Gray Book Lecture Series, most notably during Lecture Four on the subject "Hints for Public Singing."

Much of her writing has been optioned by Hollywood. Her GQ memoir about her bartending years became the Disney movie "Coyote Ugly"; and Paramount Pictures has acquired screen rights to the Eat, Pray, Love.

She currently lives in New Jersey, and is at work on a new book. [close]