Elizabeth Gilbert became a writer in residence at UT after an epic journey around the world chronicled in her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia (Viking, 2006), for which the travel was paid by a publisher’s advance. While at UT in spring 2005, she was a visiting writer in the Department of English and taught a class called Location, Location, Location: Sense of Place in Fiction. She also completed work on Eat, Pray, and Love from her suite in the Oliver Hotel on Market Square.
The book was on the New York Times Best Seller List of nonfiction in the spring of 2006. In October 2008, after 88 weeks, the book was still on the list at number 2. The book was optioned for a film by Columbia Pictures, which was released in 2010 as Eat Pray Love, with Julia Roberts starring as Gilbert.