Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth M. Gilbert (born July 18, 1969) is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist, and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which as of December 2010 has spent 199 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list, and which was also made into a film by the same name in 2010. 2Early life Gilbert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father was a chemical engineer; her mother a housewife. She is of Swedish descent. Along with her only sister, novelist Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Gilbert grew up on a small family 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 sister entertained themselves by writing books and plays. Gilbert earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from New York University in 1991, after which she worked as a cook, a bartender, a waitress, and a magazine employee. She wrote of her experience as a cook on a dude ranch in short stories, and also briefly in her book The Last American Man (Viking 2002