# Jeannette Walls
**Jeannette Walls** (born 1960 in [Phoenix, Arizona](https://www.edgepedia.org/phoenix-arizona)) is an American author and journalist best known for *[The Glass Castle](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-glass-castle)* (2005), a memoir of her unconventional, poverty-marked childhood that spent more than eight years on the New York Times bestseller list.[1](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf) • [2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841) Before turning to books, she was the gossip correspondent for E! Television and wrote New York magazine's "Intelligencer" column.[3](https://us.macmillan.com/author/jeanettewalls)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 1960, Phoenix, Arizona[1](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf) |
| Education | Barnard College, bachelor's degree with honors, 1984, funded through grants, scholarships, and a job at a Wall Street law firm[1](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf) |
| Journalism | Gossip correspondent for E! Television; "Intelligencer" columnist for New York magazine; also wrote for Esquire and MSNBC[3](https://us.macmillan.com/author/jeanettewalls) • [4](https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/walls-jeannette/) |
| Breakout book | *The Glass Castle* (Scribner, 2005, 304 pages), a memoir; a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years[5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html) • [2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841) |
| Other books | *Dish* (2000), *Half Broke Horses* (2009), *The Silver Star* (2013), *Hang the Moon* (2023)[6](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/glasscastle/context/) • [5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html) |
| Recognition | *Half Broke Horses* named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review[2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841) |
| Personal life | Lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor[2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841) |
## Early life and education
Walls was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in a constantly moving, unconventional family; her publisher's speakers bureau describes a childhood shaped by extreme poverty and unpredictability, yet grounded in fearless independence.[1](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf) • [4](https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/walls-jeannette/) In interviews she has described her past as a hardscrabble Appalachian upbringing that she mostly kept under wraps until the memoir appeared.[7](https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/there-are-people-like-me-jeannette-walls-on-the-glass-castle)
**Barnard College.** Walls attended Barnard through a combination of grants, scholarships, and a year spent answering phones on [Wall Street](https://www.edgepedia.org/wall-street), earning her bachelor's degree with honors in 1984.[1](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf) • [4](https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/walls-jeannette/) She began her journalism career with an internship at a Brooklyn newspaper before becoming a full-time reporter.[1](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf)
## Journalism career
Walls joined New York magazine in the 1980s, where her career as a writer began, and became known as a gossip columnist.[8](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/glass-castle-author-jeannette-walls-130027225.html) She served as the gossip correspondent for E! Television and wrote the magazine's "Intelligencer" column, and her bylines include Esquire and MSNBC.[3](https://us.macmillan.com/author/jeanettewalls) • [4](https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/walls-jeannette/)
In 2000 she published her first book, *Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip*, about the underappreciated history and role of gossip in American society. During this phase of her career she also wrote a particularly negative article about the [Church of Scientology](https://www.edgepedia.org/church-of-scientology).[6](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/glasscastle/context/)
## The Glass Castle
*The Glass Castle*, published by Scribner in 2005, is a memoir, a nonfiction narrative based on Walls's own experience.[5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html) • [9](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-glass-castle/literary-devices/genre) It opens with Walls looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she is "overdressed for the evening," and spotting her mother on the sidewalk rooting through a.[5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html) The book recounts the childhood she had kept hidden while working as a gossip columnist in New York.[7](https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/there-are-people-like-me-jeannette-walls-on-the-glass-castle)
The memoir spent more than eight years on the New York Times bestseller list.[2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841) Reviewers often mentioned the "truth is stranger than fiction" aphorism when writing about it.[10](https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/culture-magazines/walls-jeannette) Walls said that the first time she read the finished version, "I was like, 'Dang, I got a weird life!'"[11](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/12700-pw-profiles-jeannette-walls-truth-in-nonfiction-and-fiction.html)
**Genre and reception.** The book's classification has drawn scholarly attention. In a 2022 thesis for Scripps College, Anna Cornelia Salvati studied how *The Glass Castle* was reclassified and the fine distinctions within memoir, contending that while trauma memoirs have genuinely gained cultural prominence, the genre should not serve as a catch-all label for memoirs addressing trauma.[12](https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1939/) A film adaptation was developed with [Brie Larson](https://www.edgepedia.org/brie-larson) attached to star, reuniting her with director Destin Cretton, with whom she had made *[Short Term 12](https://www.edgepedia.org/short-term-12)*.[13](https://time.com/4239723/oscars-2016-brie-larson-best-actress/)
## Later books
Walls followed the memoir with *Half Broke Horses* (2009), subtitled "A True-Life Novel," about her grandmother Lily Casey Smith, a rancher, schoolteacher, businesswoman, wife, and mother who spent the first ten years of her life in a dirt dugout in west Texas.[14](https://www.hcn.org/issues/42-3/half_broke_horsesth-jpg/) • [5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html) [The New York Times Book Review](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-new-york-times-book-review) named it one of the ten best books of 2009.[2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841) *The Silver Star* (2013), an instant New York Times bestseller, follows 12-year-old Bean Holladay and her 15-year-old sister Liz after they are abandoned by their unstable mother, Charlotte.[5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html) • [2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841)
Her most recent novel, *Hang the Moon* (2023), is set in Prohibition-era Virginia and traces two feuding families and a woman who rises to the top of a bootlegging empire. Sallie Kincaid, daughter of the enigmatic patriarch "the Duke," takes charge of the family business during the [Prohibition](https://www.edgepedia.org/prohibition) years and, as "Queen of the Kincaid Rumrunners," oversees a profitable operation that escalates a backwoods land dispute with the Bond family into a violent war.[15](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781501117299) Reviewers praised its construction of female characters and its plot twists; NPR called it "brilliant and effervescent," and The Washington Post noted that Walls, who started her career as a gossip columnist, "still loves an outrageous crime scene and a good scandal."[16](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/hang-the-moon/) The publisher lists it as an instant New York Times bestseller.[2](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841)
## References
1. [About the Author, The Glass Castle Club Leader Handbook, Council for Opportunity in Education](https://coenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Club-Leader-Handbook-Opportunity-Matters-Book-Club-2025-The-Glass-Castle.pdf)
2. [Jeannette Walls, Official Publisher Page, Simon & Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jeannette-Walls/19723841)
3. [Jeanette Walls, Authors, Macmillan](https://us.macmillan.com/author/jeanettewalls)
4. [Jeannette Walls, Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau](https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/walls-jeannette/)
5. [Books by Jeannette Walls and Complete Book Reviews, Publishers Weekly](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeannette-walls.html)
6. [The Glass Castle: Jeannette Walls and Background, SparkNotes](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/glasscastle/context/)
7. [There Are People Like Me: Jeannette Walls on "The Glass Castle", RogerEbert.com](https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/there-are-people-like-me-jeannette-walls-on-the-glass-castle)
8. [The Glass Castle Author Jeannette Walls: Her Incredible Journey, Yahoo Entertainment](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/glass-castle-author-jeannette-walls-130027225.html)
9. [The Glass Castle: Genre, LitCharts](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-glass-castle/literary-devices/genre)
10. [Walls, Jeannette, Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/culture-magazines/walls-jeannette)
11. [PW Profiles Jeannette Walls: Truth in Nonfiction... and Fiction, Publishers Weekly](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/12700-pw-profiles-jeannette-walls-truth-in-nonfiction-and-fiction.html)
12. [Anna Cornelia Salvati, "The Subtle Distinctions of Memoir: Reclassifying Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle" (2022), Scripps College](https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1939/)
13. [Everything You Need to Know About Brie Larson, Time](https://time.com/4239723/oscars-2016-brie-larson-best-actress/)
14. [The limits of memory, High Country News](https://www.hcn.org/issues/42-3/half_broke_horsesth-jpg/)
15. [Hang the Moon, review, Publishers Weekly](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781501117299)
16. [All Book Marks reviews for Hang the Moon, Book Marks](https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/hang-the-moon/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Writers and literary biographies › Biographers, critics, and specialist non-fiction writers › Memoirists and autobiographers › Personal-life and confessional memoirists*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license