Elizabeth Gilbert interviewed by Paul Holdengraber

Elizabeth Gilbert on 'Eat, Pray, Love', in conversation with Paul Holdengräber

15 Sep 2010

Speakers: Elizabeth Gilbert, Paul Holdengräber

This sold-out event took place on 15th September 2010 at Cadogan Hall in London.

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Event info:

You've seen the billboards for the movie 'Eat, Pray, Love' showing a pensive, questing Julia Roberts. The author of the book that inspired the film gave an exclusive talk in London for Intelligence Squared, in which interviewer Paul Holdengräber brought the intellectual side of Gilbert to the fore.

Gilbert’s childhood evenings were peopled by eccentric, drunk, and competitively outrageous family members, who made Elizabeth Gilbert realise that when it comes to storytelling 'no one’s going to give you the floor...you have to earn it by telling the best story'. Gilbert recounts how she literally 'married' writing when she was a teenager in a ceremony in her bedroom, and also how, since the success of her globe-trotting memoir ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, she has become a more sedentary creature, like Candide nowhere more content than gardening at home in New Jersey. Gilbert and Holdengräber share a delighted reverence for Balzac, Calvino, Tom Waits, and their conversation turns into an unashamed worship of good writing.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Author of the best-selling Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Paul Holdengräber

Director of LIVE from the New York Public Library where he has interviewed and hosted President Clinton, Norman Mailer, Spike Lee and Jay-Z