Standby tickets only are $35 at the door.
(Each ticket includes one copy of Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.)

Proceeds will go toward supporting residencies for visual artists, writers, and composers at the Ucross Foundation, www.ucrossfoundation.org.

Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote a draft of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love at Ucross, will read from her new book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Viking). "The two books I've written at Ucross are the pride of my creative life," says Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Sponsored by Apache Corporation

Author photo by Shea Hembrey

About the author:
Elizabeth Gilbert is is an award-winning writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, her fifth book, will be published on January 5, 2010. Her first book, the short story collection Pilgrims, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, and her novel Stern Men was a New York Times notable book. Her 2002 book The Last American Man was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critic's Circle Award. Since its initial publication in January 2006, her most recent book Eat, Pray, Love spent 57 weeks in the #1 spot on The New York Times paperback bestseller list. It has shipped over 6 million copies in the US and has been published in over 30 languages. A film adaptation of the book is coming out in summer 2010 from Columbia Pictures with an all star cast: Julia Roberts as Gilbert, Javier Bardem as Felipe, James Franco as David, Billy Crudup as her ex-husband and Richard Jenkins as Richard from Texas.

About Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage:
Committed begins where Eat, Pray Love ended – just after Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. They had sworn eternal fidelity to each, but also swore never to get married under any circumstances…until providence intervened in the form of the U.S. government at a Texas border crossing. Told with Gilbert's trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, Committed turns on all the lights when it comes to matrimony and in the end becomes a clear-eyed celebration of what real love, in the real world, actually entails.

About the Ucross Foundation:
Founded in 1981 by Raymond Plank, and located on a 21,000-acre working cattle ranch, the Ucross Foundation provides living accommodations, studio space, uninterrupted time, and the experience of the extraordinary High Plains landscape to competitively selected individuals and small groups. Ucross supports those whose work reflects innovative thinking, a depth of creative exploration and the potential for significant future accomplishments.  Through its Residency Program, art gallery, and associated activities, Ucross actively seeks to support an appreciation for vibrant human creativity and aims to cast a reflection into the future from the cultural mirror of our lives and times.
 
Over 1,400 visual artists, writers, composers and choreographers have spent time at Ucross, including Pulitzer Prize winners Annie Proulx, Doug Wright, and Nilo Cruz, National Book Award winners Andrew Solomon and Ha Jin, PEN/Faulkner winner Ann Patchett, MacArthur "Genius" Fellows Sarah Ruhl, Colson Whitehead and Charles Wuorinen, and Tony Award winner Adam Guettel. Houston artists and writers who have been awarded Ucross Foundation residencies include writers Tony Hoagland and Kathleen Lee, visual artists Al Souza, Benjamin Butler and Randall McCabe, and composer Michael Remson.  

A recipient of the Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Ucross Foundation is honored to participate in collaborations with other arts organizations who share our vision, including the Alley Theatre (to support emerging playwrights), the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, the Alpert Award in the Arts (administered by CalArts and supported by the Herb Alpert Foundation), and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction. Ucross has also partnered recently with the University of Wyoming's MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Elaine Lebenbom Award for a female composer.

The Foundation has supported numerous conservation initiatives including the placement of a conservation easement on over 12,000 acres of the ranch with the Wyoming Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.  The cattle ranch is leased to the Apache Foundation which this year spearheaded the planting of over 6,500 trees on the Ucross Ranch.