17 Facts About Tara Westover

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.