Tara Westover

Biography

Tara Westover was born in 1986 in Clifton, Idaho, the seventh child of Val (Gene) and LaRee Westover. She had no birth certificate until age nine. She never attended school. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to pass the ACT at seventeen, entered Brigham Young University, won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and earned her PhD in intellectual history from the University of Cambridge in 2014. She began writing Educated shortly after completing her doctorate. It was published in 2018, spent over 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Her family disputes many of her accounts. Her parents and most of her siblings are estranged from her.

Tara Westover at a glance