Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls (born April 21, 1960) is an American writer and journalist widely known as former gossip columnist for MSNBC.com — and author of The Glass Castle, a memoir of the nomadic family life of her childhood, which stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 261 weeks.^[1]

Early life and education

Walls was born on April 21, 1960, in Phoenix, Arizona, to Rex Walls (deceased 1994 of heart attack) and Rose Mary Walls. Walls has two sisters, Lori and Maureen, and one brother, Brian. Walls' family life was rootless, with the family shuttling from Phoenix, Arizona, California (including a brief stay in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco), Battle Mountain, Nevada, and Welch, West Virginia, with periods of homelessness. When they finally landed in Rex’s Appalachian hometown, Welch, W.Va., the family lived in a three-room house without plumbing or heat, infested with snakes and rats. Walls moved to New York at age 17 to join her sister Lori. She finished high school in the city, and with grants, loans, scholarships and a year spent answering phones at a Wall Street law firm, put herself through Barnard and graduated in 1984 with honors.^[2]

Personal life

Walls married Eric Goldberg in 1988; they divorced in 1996. She now lives outside Culpeper, Virginia, with her second husband, journalist John J. Taylor. They live on a 205-acre farm, with her mother, Rose Mary.

Career

Early in her career Walls interned at a Brooklyn newspaper called The Phoenix and eventually became a full-time reporter there. From 1987 to 1993 she wrote the "Intelligencer" column for New York magazine.^[3] She contributed regularly to the gossip column "Scoop" at MSNBC.com from 1998^[3] until her departure to write full-time in 2007.^[4][5] She has also written for Esquire (1993–1998),^[3] and USA Today,^[3] and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, Primetime, and The Colbert Report.

Her 2000 book, Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip, was a humorous history of the role gossip has played in U.S. media, politics and life.^[6] In that book, Walls incidentally outed conservative cyber-gossip Matt Drudge as gay.^[7]

In 2005, Walls published the best-selling memoir The Glass Castle,^[8] which details the joys and struggles of her childhood. It offers a look into her life and that of her charismatic but dysfunctional family. The Glass Castle was well received by critics and the public.^[9] It has sold over 2.7 million copies and has been translated into 22 languages. It received the Christopher Award, the American Library Association's Alex Award (2006), and the Books for Better Living Award.^[10] Paramount bought the film rights to the book,^[11] and in March 2013 announced that actress Jennifer Lawrence would play Walls in the movie adaptation. On October 9, 2015, it was reported that Lawrence withdrew from the film and she would be replaced by actress Brie Larson.

In 2009, Walls published her first novel, Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, based on the life of her grandmother Lily Casey Smith.

Walls's latest novel, The Silver Star, was published in 2013.

Works

• The Glass Castle. New York: Scribner. March 2005. ISBN 0-7432-4753-1. 
• Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel. New York: Scribner. October 2009. ISBN 1-4165-8628-8. 
• Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip. New York: Avon Books, Inc. March 2000. ISBN 0-380-97821-0. 
• The Silver Star. Scribner, 2013.

References

External links

• Publisher's Biography
• Interview with Leahpeah