Elizabeth Gilbert (born 1969) is an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, and memoirist. 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... An essayist is an author who writes compositions which can be about any particular subject. ... This article is in need of attention. ... As a literary genre, a memoir (from the Latin memoria, meaning memory) forms a subclass of autobiography, although it is an older form of writing. ...

Elizabeth Gilbert was born in Connecticut. Along with her sister, novelist and historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Gilbert grew up on a small family tree farm. She attended New York University and graduated in 1991 with a BA in Political Science, after which she lived the life of a literary vagabond — experiencing life as a cook, a waitress, a magazine lackey — in order to write about it. Her experiences as a cook on a dude ranch found their way into both short stories and her book The Last American Man (Viking 2002). This does not cite its references or sources. ... New York University (NYU) is a major research university in New York City. ...

Gilbert was first published in 1993, when Esquire published her short story “Pilgrims”. The story ran under the headline, “The Debut of an American Writer”. She was the first unpublished short story writer to debut in Esquire since Norman Mailer. George Lois cover design for Esquire (May 1969) Esquire is a magazine for men owned by the Hearst Corporation. ... Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director who, along with Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe, is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism. ...

Gilbert has published in a wide range of formats.

Her first book Pilgrims (Houghton-Mifflin 1997), a collection of short stories, received the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The Pushcart Prize - Best of the small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. ... The Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award is awarded annually to a novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a book of fiction. ...

This was followed by her novel Stern Men (Houghton-Mifflin 2000), selected by The New York Times as a "Notable Book". A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

Her biography The Last American Man (Viking 2002) about Eustace Conway, a modern-day woodsman, received a nomination for the National Book Award in non-fiction. The National Book Award is one of the most important literary prizes in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and are presently awarded in each... Non-fiction is an account or representation of a subject which is presented as fact. ...

Most recently, she published a memoir of a year of personal exploration entitled Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything, Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Viking, 2006). It was on the New York Times best seller list of non-fiction in the spring of 2006.

Gilbert has also worked steadily as a journalist for a variety of magazines including, SPIN, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Allure, Real Simple, and Travel + Leisure. One GQ story, "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon", a memoir about Gilbert’s career as a bartender in a lowdown East Village dive, was the basis for the Disney movie Coyote Ugly. Spin is a music magazine that reports on all the music that rocks. Founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. ... GQ can refer to several things: Gentlemens Quarterly, a mens magazine The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for Equatorial Guinea GQ, a replacement Quake 1 game engine This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... Image:061024cover. ... An Issue of Real Simple Real Simple is a monthly womens interest magazine published by Time Publishing Ventures. ... Travel + Leisure is an American magazine initially published in 1971 as a spin-off of Playboy, and is now a subsidiary of American Express. ... Looking south from 6th Street down Second Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares through the East Village. ... Coyote ugly is a term made famous by the film of the same name (see below). ...

External links

• Author's Official site
• Interview at Powells.com
• Eat, Pray, Love (audio), interview by Megan Sukys, The Beat, KUOW, March 14, 2006.