Noted author Elizabeth Gilbert will read at Writers in the Library on Monday, January 31 at 7 p.m. in the Lindsay Young Auditorium of Hodges Library on the UT Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Gilbert has written creative nonfiction for Spin, Esquire and Harper’s, as well as short stories and novels. One piece she wrote for GQ about her time working in a Manhattan bar became the basis for the 2000 film Coyote Ugly.

Gilbert majored in political science at NYU and then headed west to Wyoming to work as a ranch hand after graduation, although she always knew she wanted to be a writer. “Everything I did in my twenties was with an eye toward creating experiences to write about, gathering landscapes and voices,” Gilbert said in an interview in Poets & Writers. “I went West for the same reason I worked at a diner and in bars, the same reason I talked to every single person I ever met: just to learn.”