Jeannette Walls
is a writer and journalist widely known as former gossip columnist for MSNBC.com and author of The Glass Castle
, a memoir of her family's peripatetic wanderings during her childhood, which stayed on the New York Times
Best Seller list for 100 weeks. [1]
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JEANNETTE WALLS TICKETS
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Personal life
One of four siblings, Walls was born in
Phoenix, Arizona, in 1960
[2] to Rex Walls (deceased 1994), an electrician, and Rose Mary Walls, an artist.
As detailed in
The Glass Castle, Walls' family life was rootless, with the family shuttling from Arizona, California,
Battle Mountain, Nevada, and
Welch, West Virginia, with periods of homelessness. Walls moved to New York City at age 17
and graduated in 1984
with honors from
Barnard College.
Walls married Eric Goldberg in 1988 (divorced, 1996)
and now lives outside Culpepper, Virginia, with her husband, journalist John Taylor,
a former writer for
Esquire
and the author of
The Count and the Confession: A True Murder Mystery
,
Falling: The Story of One Marriage
, and
Circus of Ambition: The Culture of Wealth and Power in the Eighties.
Career
Walls has written for
New York
(the "Intelligencer" column 1987-1993),
Esquire
(1993-1998),
and
USA Today
,
and has appeared on
The Today Show
,
CNN,
Primetime
, and
The Colbert Report
. She contributed regularly to the gossip column "Scoop" at
MSNBC.com from 1998
until her departure to write full time in 2007.
[3] [4]
In 2000, Walls published the book
Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip
in which she, incidentally,
outed conservative cyber-gossip
Matt Drudge as gay.
[5]
In 2005, Walls published the bestselling memoir
The Glass Castle
,
[6] now under development as a film by
Paramount.
[7] By late 2007,
The Glass Castle
had sold over 1.5 million copies, had been translated into 16 languages, and received the
Christopher Award, the
American Library Association's
Alex Award (2006) and the Books for Better Living Award.
[8]
Walls' next book,
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
, is scheduled for publication on October 6, 2009.
Bibliography
References
- Best-selling author to speak in Fremont
- Jeannette Walls
- Jeannette Walls leaving msnbc.com
- Jeannette Walls, author, The Glass Castle, gossip columnist, MSNBC.com
- Queer in America
- The Glass Castle
- Pitt's Plan B inks deal with Paramount
- Porter-Gaud hosts noted author Walls