Tiny Beautiful Things brings the "Dear Sugar" advice column to moving life at Stages

Author Cheryl Strayed's words of comfort and grace form the backbone of this unlikely but surprisingly effective production. April 5, 2026

Houston Chronicle

You may have heard of the author Cheryl Strayed who wrote a memoir called Wild: Lost and Found about her long solo hike of over a thousand miles in the Pacific Northwest while grieving her mother and finding herself. It was also made into a successful film starring Reese Witherspoon.

Before that memoir, Strayed took on the unpaid role of Sugar for an anonymous advice column called “Dear Sugar.” She took online questions from a lot of suffering people, and used some of her own personal struggles as a way to answer the questions from her various readers. Strayed wrote about the experience in the memoir called Tiny Beautiful Things, and Nia Vardalos (best known for the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding) adapted the play of the same name from the book and the column.