Elizabeth Gilbert and the Ghost of Rayya Elias
Elizabeth Gilbert and Oprah Winfrey This morning I happened to turn on the television to find Oprah Winfrey talking with Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, whom I had met in 2019 at a reading by author Azure Antoinette Varos. At the time, I had no idea that Elizabeth had recently buried her partner Rayya Elias, who was also an author and musician. After doing some research I learned that Gilbert had divorced her husband of nine years to enter into an intimate relationship with Elias, who had been her best friend for fifteen years. At that time, Elias had been diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer. She died within two years at age 57. Gilbert and Rayya Elias A Syrian-born writer, musician, and filmmaker, Elias’s own book (titled Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, From the Middle East to the Lower East Side ) was published in 2013 with an introduction by Gilbert. In it, Elias detailed four decades of her life as a gay Middle Eastern woman in the ...