Tara Westover, author of Educated. Tara Westover received her BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She then returned to the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Her first book, Educated (2018), is a memoir of Westover’s life growing up with her survivalist family in rural Idaho and her journey to education. It debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has remained on the list for more than a year. It was a finalist for several national awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and President Obama and Bill Gates both recommended Educated on their annual reading lists. The American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year, and Time Magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019.
While at the Shorenstein Center, Westover wrote, taught student workshops, and interacted with the Harvard community.
