few years ago, I wrote a book called Eat, Pray, Love, which •old the story of a journey I had taken around the world, alone, after • bad divorce. I was in my midthirties when I wrote that book, and everything about it represented a huge departure for me as a writer. Before Eat, Pray, Love, I had been known in literary circles (if I was known at all) as a woman who wrote predominantly for, and about, men. I’d been working for years as a journalist for such male-focused magazines as GQ and Spin, and I had used those pages to ex-: plore masculinity from every possible angle. Similarly, the subjects of my first three books (both fiction and nonfiction) were all supermacho characters: cowboys, lobster fishermen, hunters, truckers, Teamsters, woodsmen...
Back then, I was often told that I wrote like a man. Now, I’m not entirely sure what writing “like a man” even means, but I do believe it is generally intended as a compliment. I certainly took it as a compliment at the time. For one GQ article, I even went so far as to impersonate a man for a week. I cropped my hair, flattened my breasts, stuffed a birdseed-filled condom down my pants, and affixed a soul patch beneath my lower lip—all in an effort to somehow inhabit and comprehend the alluring mysteries of manhood.

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