Booking Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls Biography

American writer and author of the best-selling memoir The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls was born in 1960 in Phoenix, Arizona. Walls grew up in a highly dysfunctional family living in abject poverty, largely due to her parents’ own choices, and as a child she was shuttled from city to city, living in West Virginia, Nevada, California, and Arizona.

At the young age of seventeen, Jeannette followed her older sister to New York City to finish her high school education and begin pursuit of a better life. Through loans, scholarships, and grants, Walls completed her college education at Columbia University’s affiliated liberal arts college, Barnard College, in 1984. While still in high school, Jeannette worked at a local Brooklyn newspaper, rising to become a full-time reporter while in college. In the early 1990’s, Walls was writing for New York magazine, and then later for a gossip column at MSNBC.com. Her 2000 book, Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip, was her first breakthrough and moderately successful.

It wasn’t until the mid-2000’s that Jeannette began to consider writing her own memoir to share the story of her unique upbringing and explore the struggles and joys of her childhood. The Glass Castle was published in 2005 and was an immediate success, earning Walls multiple awards, including the Books for Better Living Award and the coveted Christopher Award. Jeannette’s novel spent a staggering two hundred and sixty-one weeks on the New York Times best seller list.

Since The Glass Castle, Walls has published the novel Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel (2009) and The Silver Star (2013.) The Glass Castle has been adapted into a screenplay and the film version, starring Brie Larson in the role of Jeannette, is scheduled to release in 2017.