Yeesh, local author Cheryl Strayed is having a great couple of years. Yesterday it was announced that Reese Witherspoon—long on board to produce the film adaptation of Strayed's novel Wild—will also star. The Nick Hornby-written film will be distributed by Fox Searchlight. Production is scheduled to start this fall.

Strayed seems like such an overnight success story—she blew up last year with the simultaneous release of Wild and the revelation that she'd been writing the Rumpus' Dear Sugar column—but the reality is that she's been working at this writing thing for a long time. Her first novel, Torch, which I have not read, came out in 2006, when Strayed was 37, and she spent years before that writing essays, getting an MFA, and doing way less glamorous stuff, like waiting tables. In other words, she worked hard for a long time and now good stuff is happening. It's fun to watch.

Strayed is reading on Friday as part of the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop, with Major Jackson and Jim Shepard, $5, at Reed's Cerf Amphitheater.