Cheryl Strayed, best-selling author of Wild, will launch the fall Live from Prairie Lights readings on the Virtual Writing University website with Tiny Beautiful Things, Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23. The stream will originate in a free event in Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St. in downtown Iowa City.

Cheryl Strayed

Strayed's advice column on the Rumpus, Dear Sugar quickly attracted a large and devoted following with its cut-to-the-quick aphorisms like “Be brave enough to break your own heart.”

This collection gathers up the best of Sugar, whose trademark is deeply felt and frank responses grounded in her own personal experience. In many ways, it is a portrait of Strayed herself: She describes her estranged father, her passionate but doomed first marriage, her relationship with her current husband, and, most thoroughly, her much-missed mother, who died suddenly while Strayed was in college.

Sandra Scofield wrote,"Strayed writes fierce truths about how we live, with compassion, humor, and uncanny precision. We need her."

In addition to Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Strayed is the author of the novel, Torch. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, The Best New American Voices and The Best American Essays.

For accommodations at the live event, contact jan@prairielights.com.