Strayed has described this loss as her 'genesis story.' She has written about her mother's death and her grief in each of her books and several of her essays. Soon afterward, Strayed developed a heroin addiction. In March 1991, when Strayed was a senior in college, her mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45. Thomas in Saint Paul, but by her sophomore year, she transferred to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree, with a double major in English and Women's Studies. Strayed attended her freshman year of college at the University of St. She loosely based the fictional Coltrap County in her novel Torch on McGregor and Aitkin County.

In 1987, during the summer, Strayed worked as a newspaper reporter for her hometown county weekly, the Aitkin Independent Age in Aitkin, Minnesota. In 1986, at the age of 17, Strayed graduated from McGregor High School in McGregor, Minnesota. Strayed also has two half-siblings from her father's second marriage, with whom she connected only after 'Wild' was published. Indoor plumbing was installed after Strayed moved away for college. The house did not have electricity or running water for the first few years. When Cheryl was 12 her mother married Glenn Lambrecht, and the following year the family moved to rural Aitkin County, where they lived in a house that they had built themselves on 40 acres. Her parents divorced soon after and Cheryl's father left her life. At age six, she moved with her family from Pennsylvania to Chaska, Minnesota. From age three to six, Strayed was sexually abused by her paternal grandfather. Strayed was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania, the second daughter of Barbara Anne 'Bobbi' (née Young 1945–1991) and Ronald Nyland. Wild, which told the story of a long hike that Strayed took in 1995, was an international bestseller, and was adapted as the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Wild. She has written four books: the novel Torch (2006) and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) and Brave Enough (2015). Cheryl Strayed ( / ˈ s t r eɪ d/ née Nyland born September 17, 1968) is an American writer and podcast host.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed