Tara Westover
Early life and education
Westover was the youngest of seven children born in Clifton, Idaho (population 259) to Mormon
survivalist parents. She has five older brothers and an older sister.
Her parents were suspicious of doctors, hospitals, public schools, and the federal government. Westover was born at home, delivered by a
midwife, and was never taken to a doctor or nurse.
She was not registered for a birth certificate until she was nine years old. Their father resisted getting formal medical treatment for any of the family. Even when seriously injured, the children were treated only by their mother, who had studied
herbalism and other methods of alternative healing.
All the siblings were loosely homeschooled by their mother. Westover has said an older brother taught her to read, and she studied the scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But she never attended a lecture, wrote an essay, or took an exam. There were few textbooks in their house.
As a teenager, Westover began to want to enter the larger world and attend college. She purchased textbooks and Autodidacticism in order to score well on the ACT test. She gained admission to Brigham Young University and was awarded a scholarship, although she had no high school diploma. After a difficult first year, in which Westover struggled to adjust to Academy and the wider society there, she became more successful and graduated with honors in 2008.
She then earned a Master's degree from the University of Cambridge at Trinity College
In 2009, while a graduate student at Cambridge, Westover told her parents that for many years (since age 15), she had been physically and psychologically abused by an older brother. Her parents denied her account and suggested that Westover was under the influence of Satan. The family split over these events. Westover wrote about the estrangement, and her unusual path to and through university education in her 2018 memoir, Educated.
Career
Westover was a Fall 2019 A.M. Rosenthal Writer in Residence at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School. She was then selected as a Senior Research Fellow at the school for the spring of 2020.
Westover has written for The New York Times
Works
Educated: A Memoir
In 2018, Penguin Random House published Westover's
, which tells the story of her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her family's rigid
ideology and isolated life.
The coming-of-age story was a No. 1
New York Times bestseller, and was positively reviewed by the
New York Times,
,
,
,
and
The Economist,
among others.
, Educated has spent two years in hardcover on the New York Times bestseller list
Through their attorney, the family has disputed some elements of Westover's book, including her suggestion that her father may have bipolar disorder and that her mother may have suffered a brain injury that resulted in reduced motor skills.
Awards and recognition
Westover's book earned her several awards, and other recognition.
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Named the Book of the Year by the American Booksellers Association
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Finalist for the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle
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Finalist for the Autobiography Award from the National Book Critics Circle
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Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
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Finalist for PEN/America's Jean Stein Award
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Finalist for the American Booksellers Association Audiobook of the Year Award
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Finalist for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great Writers Award
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One of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2018
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Long-listed for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence
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Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Autobiography
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Winner of the Audie Award for Autobiography/Memoir
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Alex Award from the American Library Association
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Named an "Amazing Audiobook for Young Adults" by the American Library Association
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Amazon Editors' pick for the Best Book of 2018
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Apple's Best Memoir of the Year
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Audible's Best Memoir of the Year
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Hudson Group Best Book of the Year
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President Barack Obama's pick for summer reading and his Favorite Books of the Year list
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Bill Gates's Holiday Reading list
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Westover chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019
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Educated named one of the Best Books of the year by The Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, Good Morning America, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Post, The Skimm, Bloomberg News, Real Simple, Town & Country, Bustle, Publishers Weekly, The Library Journal, Book Riot, and the New York Public Library.
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Featured speaker, Seattle Arts & Lectures, 2019 [1]
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New York Historical Society Women in Public Life Award
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James Joyce Award
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Evans Handcart Award
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National Humanities Medal, 2021
Personal life
Westover lives in
London.
External links
