Breezy & Brilliant: Author Elizabeth Gilbert

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MOST KNOW HER as Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the 2006 blockbuster soul-searching memoir "Eat, Pray, Love." But when Gilbert, 40, accidentally calls two weeks before a scheduled interview, she simply leaves a message to call back "Liz." It's this friendly familiarity that draws in readers and will make her March 27 PEN/Faulkner talk at the National Cathedral (Massachusetts and Wisconsin avenues NW; 8 p.m., $10; 202-537-6200) all the more compelling.

» EXPRESS: Thanks for being uber-punctual.
» GILBERT: I am so sorry! [Laughs] You know what? I've got so much going on right now and I just got back here yesterday! Would you prefer we talk later? I'd be happy to call you back.

» EXPRESS: Not at all! So it's been a whirlwind ever since "Eat, Pray, Love"?
» GILBERT: It's been a bit of chaos, but it's also removed a bit. ... I used to spend months a year traveling and working on magazine stories. I haven't had to do that since "Eat, Pray, Love." It balances out in a funny way. It took time away, but [also] put it back.

» EXPRESS: What did you gain with this time?
» GILBERT: A bit of domestic stability, which is something I've never had. I have a really nice man I'm married to — We started this retail business because we travel together and buy strange things overseas. We have this warehouse in New Jersey we sell from. If you want to look it's called Twobuttons.com.

It's wonderful for me because it's so different from what I do for my normal life. What I do is so ephemeral, and this is so supremely material. I can be working on a book and having trouble with it, and I can go down to the warehouse and the big question is, "Should the Buddha be in this corner or that corner?"

» EXPRESS: What will you discuss Friday?
» GILBERT: I'm going to talk about indecision ["Divine Sanity—Thoughts on Creative Life"]. It's been something I've been studying up on in relationship to the book I just finished a couple weeks ago, actually. It's a follow-up to "Eat, Pray, Love." It's called "Matrimonium" and the subtitle is, "A meditation on the subject of marriage."

"Felipe — I always feel funny saying that because it's not his real name [which is Jose Nunes], but my sweetheart from the book, otherwise known as the Brazilian guy — we ended up having to get married because of a run in with the Department of Homeland Security and [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services]. We had never, ever wanted to get married again — neither one of us — so we were pushed into it. ... It's such a loaded topic for me, the whole subject of marriage, I figured I should use that as an opportunity to really figure out what marriage is.

» EXPRESS: When does the book come out?
» GILBERT: Around January 2010.

» EXPRESS: Without giving away the plot, how were you forced into marriage?
» GILBERT: It happened about a year after we met. We had been conducting our relationship on a multi-continental level. A commitment-phobic relationship that got so expensive and complicated, that we ended up settling here in the States. But he couldn't stay for long periods of time, on account of visa restrictions. ... They just picked him out at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport back in May 2006. They chucked him in jail and deported him on the grounds that he had been coming here too often. To be honest, they couldn't have been nicer about it. It was a weird combination of tyranny and kindness. It was so strange. It also felt a little bit like the hand of destiny, where you're forced to do the one thing you totally don't want to do. You can read it in many different ways: "Alright, I get the message. It's time to make peace with this."

» EXPRESS: Are you still getting to go out and explore the world as much as you used to?
» GILBERT: Yeah, but it's funny how it's shifted in the last few years from being this great hunger to now it feels a little bit more like an obligation. If anything I'm longing for more time at home. Which is a weird thing to be getting used to because it's just never how I've been. I actually canceled two trips last year, one to Italy and one to India, that I had planned, literally days before I was going to go. It was, 'I don't want to go!' It causes a little bit of soul searching when you find yourself moving a little bit in a direction you've never been in before. You have to check in and say, "Wow, what's this about?"

But my definition of not traveling very much is going to be very different from someone else's definition of not traveling very much. Even though I say that, we just went to Tunisia, we went to Italy in January, I was in Chile for a wedding. I'm going to Australia for a stepson's wedding. Then I'm going to go to Bangkok in September to buy more stuff. Even so, in my weird, twisted mind, it feels like I'm cutting back. [laughs] Because I'm going to spend all summer at home. It's funny. I'm moving in a direction of less travel, but I think that's so relative. It only feels like I'm cutting back to me.

» EXPRESS: Is meditation still important in you life?
» GILBERT: I would love to say "yes," but it just isn't. Yoga is. Yoga is something I can't live without, but meditation is something I've just not been able to stick to. It's not something I'm holding with a great longing anymore. Once these really fundamental questions had been answered in my life, a lot of that real yearning went away ... I still try to do something I do every day that I call a "silent bath." I just try to take 10 to 15 minutes of silence every day to enjoy stillness. ... Strictly speaking, some people call what I do during the silence "napping," but it works!

» National Cathedral, Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues NW; Fri., March 27, 8 p.m., $10; 202-537-6200.

Photos courtesy Deborah Lopez; David M Warren/Philadelphia Inquirer