17 Facts About Tara Westover

1.

Tara Westover was born on September 27,1986 and is an American memoirist, essayist and historian.

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2.

Tara Westover's memoir Educated debuted at No 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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3.

Tara Westover was the youngest of seven children born in Clifton, Idaho to Mormon survivalist parents.

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4.

Tara Westover's parents were suspicious of doctors, hospitals, public schools, and the federal government.

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5.

Tara Westover was born at home, delivered by a midwife, and was never taken to a doctor or nurse.

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6.

Tara Westover was not registered for a birth certificate until she was nine years old.

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7.

Tara Westover has said an older brother taught her to read, and she studied the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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8.

Tara Westover purchased textbooks and studied independently in order to score well on the ACT Exam.

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9.

Tara Westover gained admission to Brigham Young University and was awarded a scholarship, although she had no high school diploma.

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10.

Tara Westover then earned a Master's degree from the University of Cambridge at Trinity College as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard University in 2010.

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11.

Tara Westover returned to Trinity College, Cambridge, where she earned a doctorate in intellectual history in 2014.

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12.

In 2009, while a graduate student at Cambridge, Tara Westover told her parents that for many years, she had been physically and psychologically abused by an older brother.

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13.

Tara Westover's parents denied her account and suggested that Westover was under the influence of Satan.

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14.

Tara Westover wrote about the estrangement, and her unusual path to and through university education in her 2018 memoir, Educated.

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15.

Tara Westover was Fall 2019 AM Rosenthal Writer in Residence at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School.

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16.

Tara Westover was selected as a Senior Research Fellow at HKS for Spring 2020.

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17.

In 2018, Penguin Random House published Tara Westover's Educated: A Memoir, which tells the story of her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her family's rigid ideology and isolated life.

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