Sebold began writing Lucky after taking a memoir class with Geoffrey Wolff at the University of California, Irvine,[11] where she completed her MFA in 1998.[12] She published the book in 1999, about a year after Broadwater's release.[5] The title stemmed from a conversation with a police officer who told her that another woman had been raped and murdered in the same location, and that Sebold was "lucky" because she hadn't been killed.[9] In Lucky, Sebold used the name "Gregory Madison" for her rapist.[7][5] Sebold wrote that the trauma of the rape had made her feel isolated from her family, and that for years afterwards, she experienced hypervigilance. She resigned from a job which required her to work at night, fearing danger in darkness. She became depressed, suffered from nightmares, and began drinking and using heroin. Eventually, after reading Judith Lewis Herman's Trauma and Recovery, she realized she had developed post-traumatic stress disorder.[13]
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