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How has baring yourself in a memoir affected your motivation to continue writing an advice column? Does it feel less pressing these days?

I wrote Wild before I became Dear Sugar. I was always working in that vein of being really honest and self-revealing. When I was about to reveal myself as Sugar, one of the pleas from people who didn't want me to reveal myself was, "You won't be as open with your column once we know who you are." I always said no, no, no, you're mistaken about that." Because as Cheryl Strayed I am every bit as open as I am as Sugar, and I always wrote the Sugar column, in my own heart, as Cheryl Strayed.

I knew someday my name would be on those columns. I never thought the anonymity was a way of protecting myself, so I didn't use it as such. I just think that to write this work is to be revelatory and to be open and honest.

Even in my [first] novel, Torch, I was always seeking the deepest truth. Sometimes that's literal and sometimes that's figurative, you know? That big Truth with a capital "T."

They're very different forms, those two books, Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I felt like it was really fun for me actually, after having been so deeply enmeshed in this traditional memoir form, to try something new -- to cross the boundaries of non-fiction via an advice column.

Do most Dear Sugar readers address you as Cheryl or Sugar now?

Most people respect that Sugar persona and they write to Sugar. Sometimes I've gotten some -- not to my email address, but to the Dear Sugar email address -- that say, "Dear Sugar/Cheryl." But if I chose one of those to go up on The Rumpus, I would edit out "Cheryl."

"Cheryl" will never appear in the column, or "Brian," or "Portland." I will always maintain, like I said, that language of "Sugar Land." I love that I created this narrative -- non-fiction, because it is about my life -- but I don't mention specifics when it comes to the place, or the name of the person. I write about it in more general terms.

You've mentioned before that you didn't read advice columns before starting this one. Do you read them now?

Frankly, I've been so busy. All I'm reading right now is the seven hundred books I've been asked to blurb. I don't read any advice columns regularly -- even still. When I do read an advice column, it's Cary Tennis (of Salon), who I just think is lovely and wonderful. Or (SF Weekly editor) Anna Pulley, who also is lovely and wonderful. And Dan Savage (The Stranger), who is always good for a great laugh. The advice he gives about sex is always so fun to read.

Those three are the ones that I most commonly read, but to be honest with you I can't remember the last time I read any of their columns. It's been a few months. I can't even manage to read my own email these days, let alone go online and tool around and have fun. 

• Strayed with Oprah

Your memoir, Wild, recently revitalized Oprah's Book club. No small feat. 

She just called me up one day out of the blue on my cell phone. She says, "This is Oprah." My publisher didn't know she was going to call me. She called me first. We just had this great conversation. She loved Wild.

I have so much admiration for Oprah for so many reasons -- I mean she's such a self-made woman and she's worked so hard. But what I admire most, I think, is that she's always worked really hard out of her passion. She does things because she loves them.

I went to stay with her at her place in Santa Barbara. I could just see in her eyes that she chose Wild because she just really liked Wild, you know? It wasn't some committee that pressed it on her or something. I just thought that was incredibly cool, and for me as a writer that was terribly flattering. To see that she connected with the book and decided to restart her club because of it -- it's been an amazing time.

It was really something. I'll never forget it. I kept saying to her when she was talking to me -- I kept shrieking, "Are you kidding me?! Is this a joke?! Is this candid camera or something?!"

You're 43 now. I think one thing that's endeared you to so many readers -- and writers -- is the fact that your career took off kind of late. Talk about how you value the accumulation of life experience when it comes to writing. 

It's fascinating to me -- this experience of having Wild be met with such success in the marketplace. Torch was published when I was 37, and it received wonderful reviews and critical acclaim, and it sold well for a novel by a first-time writer. It wasn't a national bestseller or any sort of sensation. I felt incredibly pleased with what happened with Torch, but I was still in this rather small pond, and comfortable there.

If you had gone back in time and said to me "If you choose this flower, you could have the sort of success with Torch that you'll have with your second book," I would have said "I want it to happen with my first book." Because we all want that, right? We're all looking for that kind of external affirmation.

But I'm so glad. I think that success too early never turns out well. Part of it is that you start focusing on the wrong things. I've been a serious writer now for 23 years, and once I got over those grandiose feelings of "I want to be famous," and "I want to be rich" -- once I got over that, which I got over pretty quickly, what I really settled on was that the work was the reward. That the work experience of writing, of having that feeling, what it feels like to finish a book that you've toiled away on for years, to feel that is a success. To have that achievement, I think that is what has sort of grounded me through all of this craziness that happened with Wild.

I'm really excited about what's happened with Wild, and it's beyond anything that I ever really dreamed. It's not that I made my dream small, but I realized pretty early on that that can't be the measure of success for artists. Outside stuff happens sometimes, and it doesn't happen sometimes, and it doesn't really have a direct relationship to the quality of the work.

I guess I just keep faith with the work. That's something I say as Sugar a lot: Keep faith with the work. Keep faith with the work. And I do. I only could have done that after writing by myself for all of those years and having to constantly seek that assurance from within, instead of getting it from an external source.

Now that I am getting it externally, I'm not taking it too terribly seriously. I'm just going to keep doing what I've done. I'm just going to write another book.

That book could be just totally ignored, but I'm going to write it anyway.