Jeannette Walls Age, Family, Young, Husband, Bio, Wiki Books (2024)

Jeannette Walls was born on April 21, 1960. She is a Journalist and an Author as well as a famous former gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, she is also widely known for her book, “The Glass Castle“, which is based on a memoir of the nomadic family, who were her neighbors during her childhood in America, published in 2005.

Her book was featured in the New York Times Best Seller list for straight 421 weeks till June 3, 2018. In 2006, she was nominated for Alex Awards and the Christopher Award. Currently, she is married to her second husband, John J. Taylor.

Bio/Wiki
Real NameJeannette Walls
NicknameGossip columnist
ProfessionJournalist, Author
Personal Life
Date of BirthApril 21, 1960
Age (as of 2022)62 years
BirthplacePhoenix, Arizona
NationalityAmerican
HometownAppalachian, The United States of America
College/UniversityBarnard College
EducationalBachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts
Career
Debut NovelHalf Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel [2009]
Award* The Books for Better Living Award
* Christopher Award
* the American Library Association's Alex Award
Best BookThe Glass Castle: A Memoir [2005]
Physical Stats
Height (approx.)in centimeters- 168 cm
in meters- 1.68 m
in feet inches- 5'6"
Weight (approx.)in kilograms- 70 kg
in pounds- 137 lbs
Hair ColorBrown
Eye ColorGreen
Relationships & Affairs
Marital statusMarried
HusbandJohn J. Taylor. [m. 2002]
Ex-HusbandEric Goldberg [m. 1988–1996]
Family
ParentsFather- Rex Walls
Mother- Rose Mary Walls
SiblingsSisters- Lori Walls and Maureen Walls
Brother- Brian Walls
ChildrenN/A
Income
Net Worth [approx.]$14 Million
Social Media
Instagram@the.jeannette.walls
Twitter@jeannetteewalls
Facebook@JeannetteWalls

Early Life & Childhood

Jeanette was born on April 21, 1960, in Phoenix, Arizona. Her parents were Rex Walls and Rose Mary Walls, she also had 3 other siblings, two sisters, and one brother. She and her siblings, Lori and Maureen, and Brian had a really unstable and rootless childhood and teenage because their parents were not prosperous and financially stable.

They moved from Phoenix to the Tenderloin district of San Francisco where they stayed for a very short period and from there, they again moved to Battle Mountain, Nevada, and Welch, West Virginia. Sometimes, they were even homeless, but then finally they moved to Rex’s Appalachian hometown of Welch.

The family had to live in a three-room house; they didn’t even have plumbing or heating in their house; it was a very old and simple house.

When she finally turned 17, she moved with her sister Lori, at that point she worked as a waiter but pretty soon she became an artist for Archie Comics.

Then, she decided to get a college degree in Liberal Arts, but she didn’t have the money. So, she merely collected the money required through grants, loans, and scholarships, she also collected money by working a whole year at a Wall Street law firm answering calls.

Family, Parents & Siblings

The parents of Jeannette Walls are Rex Walls [father], and Rose Mary Walls [mother]. She has three siblings they are, Lori Walls [sister], Maureen Walls [sister], and Brian Walls [brother].

Education

Her school life was not great because of her family’s instability, but when she moved with her sister she made up her mind to get a proper bachelor’s degree.

So, she worked at a Wall Street Law Firm answering calls for a year, took loans, and got scholarships to collect enough money to get into Barnard College for the Liberal Arts bachelor’s degree.

Jeannette Walls’s Career

She graduated in 1984, having financed her diploma with a few scholarship funds, scholar loans, and her very own earnings. In the interim, the Walls siblings had despatched for her youngest sister, Maureen, at which factor Rex and Rose Mary determined to transport her to New York City, too.

Dismayed, however hopeful that the metropolis might have a few kinds of advantageous impact on their free-living ambition-much less dad and mom, Walls and her sister attempted to assist them at first.

However, Lori was compelled to kick them out, and after that, they lived in a van. Eventually, they joined the metropolis’s burgeoning homeless population.

Walls’ tale additionally had a Cinderella element: she commenced a relationship with a person from a moneyed, antique New York own circle of relatives.

She subsequently moved into her own circle of relatives domestically, in a luxurious Park Avenue building, and once they wed in 1988, she did now no longer invite her dad and mom to the rite and reception of the elite Harvard Club.

# Intelligencer

By then she changed into writing the “Intelligencer” column for New York mag, which changed into now no longer technically a gossip column but extra of a weekly screen of Manhattan media, politics, and celeb cultures. At the time, her dad and mom had been dwelling in a “squat,” or an off-the-books house in a deserted building.

This changed into a factor whilst the problem of homelessness changed into gaining a tremendous deal of media attention and squatting changed into in a few instances a shape of political protest. Rex proved a media-savvy ringleader, and Walls from time to time noticed him being interviewed for the nearby tv news.

Walls’ husband knew her complete tale, however, nobody in her expert lifestyle did. She changed into more and more success at her task, and the cutthroat mag ecosystem now no longer deters her.

A couple humans lashed out at me,” she recalled in an interview with Jim Windolf for Vanity Fair.

“This girl at New York mag stated, ‘You Barnard [graduates] do not know what it is like for the relaxation of us. You had the entirety passed to you. ‘I changed into flattery. I changed into like, ‘Yes! I pulled it off!'”

Her mystery changed almost made public whilst a comic-strip author from the Village Voice known as and advised her he had interviewed a homeless guy who claimed to be her father.

She begged him to hold the tale quiet, however, around this equal time she ultimately confessed to a girl colleague on the mag. That girl later wrote a romance novel about a high-profile Manhattanite, redheaded like Walls, who covers up an impoverished Appalachian past.

The “Intelligencer” column changed into the study and was observed via means of many, and Walls had little hassle transferring directly to a higher-profile task after some years.

She grew to become a contributor from the New York Post and New York Daily News to jot down a day-by-day gossip column, rather than taking a task with Esquire in 1993.

Five years later, she moved directly to MSNBC.com, in which her “Scoop” column ranks the various main scandalmongers in a % that consists of syndicated veterans Liz Smith and Cindy Adams, in addition to the scary Richard Johnson of New York Post’s “Page Six” and his New York Daily News counterpart, Lloyd Grove.

# Dish: The Inside Story

Walls’ first e-book was posted in 2000, Dish: The Inside Story at the World of Gossip, changed into now no longer a tell-all at the enterprise, however, rather mentioned its records in American popular culture over the decades.

It additionally charted the explosive upward push of a celeb-pushed media enterprise over the last decade. Her e-book did provide one quite scandalous assertion: she “outed” Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report, revealing the sexual orientation of the Internet scribe who first broke the Monica Lewinsky tale.

In reaction, Drudge posted Walls’ domestic telecall smartphone quantity on his site, however, Walls stated she refused to alternate the list and rather replied to each call.

Walls’ first marriage ended after nearly a decade. In 2002, she wed a fellow journalist, John Taylor, who changed into acquainted with the confessional-memoir genre.

Three years earlier, Taylor had written an account of his very own failed first marriage, Falling: The Story of One Marriage. But Taylor did now no longer recognize the entire tale of Walls’ upbringing.

Finally, on a stroll via Central Park sooner or later, Taylor advised her, “I’m bored with this. You’re mendacity to me approximately something,” Walls recalled inside the Vanity Fair interview.

He’s a very good journalist. He observed a few holes in my tale. And I advised him. But I was ashamed. If you’ve got that kind of past, you both make the most of it or are ashamed of it, one or the other.

Taylor recommended Walls to return easy earlier than a person else beat her to it, and he or she joked that he duct-taped her to a table in an effort to pressure her to take a seat down and write her subsequent e-book.

# The Glass Castle: A Memoir

The end result changed into The Glass Castle: A Memoir, which loved terrific publishing-enterprise buzz earlier than it regarded in stores. When chapters had been dispatched out to check the waters, editors and reviewers clamored for extra, and a few admitted to studying the manuscript in a single sitting.

The identity changed into taken from a fable that Walls’s father used to spin for her, that sooner or later he might construct her a fabulous, solar-powered glass fort within the desert.

Reviews counseled Walls’ honesty and even-handed remedy of Rex, who had died of a coronary heart assault in 1994, and Rose Mary, who changed into 70 years antique, however nevertheless dwelling in an unheated East Village hovel with a large number of cats.

Critiquing it for the New York Times Book Review, Francine Prose asserted that “Walls has a telling reminiscence for elements and an appealing, unadorned style. And there is something admirable about her refusal to take pleasure in newbie psychoanalysis, to descend to the jargon of disorder or theorize about the assets of her dad and mom’s behavior.”

Walls changed into thrilled that her candid revelations about her own circle of relatives did now no longer flip out as badly as she expected.

During the writing process, “I stored wondering, ‘Who the heck goes to care approximately this pathetic child and her wacky own circle of relatives?'” she advised Publishers Weekly interviewer Bridget Kinsella.

“But the reaction has simply bowled me over.” Even Rose Mary studied the e-book and preferred it, even though she took issue with some minor characterizations, including the truth that Walls wrote that her mom changed into a horrible driver.

# More About her Career

Walls nevertheless writes the “Scoop” column, which keeps interrupting the occasional celeb-shocker. She changed into the primary to report, for instance, that hackers had cracked the code of the non-public virtual assistant tool belonging to Paris Hilton, and had been posting the telecel smartphone numbers and textual content messages online.

Two of Walls’ siblings additionally fared properly as adults: Lori became a successful illustrator, at the same time as her brother retired after twenty years as a New York City cop and began college. Their youngest sister, Maureen, lives a much less orthodox lifestyle in California.

Childless, Walls and her husband experience the top of achievement for a New York couple: a domestic in Manhattan, and every other within the Long Island lodge network of the Hamptons.

She nevertheless appreciates the small luxuries, she advised Entertainment Weekly author Karen Valby. “I will by no means take with no consideration a thermostat.

Every time I activate the sink it is a miracle. ‘Look in any respect that water gushing out!’ I visit the grocery store and I should buy something I want. I should not ask the supervisor if he has any bruised bananas at a discount.”

Relationship, Husband & Children

She was first married to Eric Goldberg in 1988 but then they divorced in 1996. Then, she found and married John J. Taylor in 2002. We don’t have any confirmed information about her children.

Physical Appearance

She is a white American woman. She has green eyes and brown hair. She is about 5 feet and 6 inches tall, she weighs almost 62 KG.

Net Worth

She is a very famous journalist and author, she has worked all her life and earned a lot of fortune. Her net worth is estimated to be between $14 million.

She mostly earns from her books, journalism, and other sponsorships. Besides offline, she also publishes her books in various online stores. She is also a growing author celebrity on social media.

Interesting Facts about Jeannette Walls

  • Jeanette had an unstable childhood because of her parent’s financial conditions.
  • She collected her college fees by taking loans and scholarships and even worked for a year to get enough money for college.
  • Her sister Lori helped her move away from her parents and got her first job when she was just 17 years old.
  • She is a pet lover and often shares her images with her pets on her social media.

Read More: Colleen Hoover | Sally Rooney

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Walls

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2005/04/jeannette-walls-msnbc-gossip-past

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Jeannette Walls Age, Family, Young, Husband, Bio, Wiki Books (2024)

FAQs

What did Jeanette Walls' dad do? ›

Her father, Rex S. Walls, was a hard-drinking drifter who dreamed of inventing a gold-detecting gizmo that would make him rich enough to build a solar-powered glass castle for his family to live in.

How much older is Brian than Jeannette? ›

Brian is a year younger than Jeannette and five years older than Maureen.

Did Jeannette marry Eric? ›

She said they lived in a big house on a hill overlooking Welch. The truth was the even Jeannette Walls' husband didn't know her real sttory. Jeannette Walls and Eric Goldberg were married four years after she moved in. Their life together was stable and uneventful, and that was just the right speed for Jeannette.

What happened to Jeannette Walls sister? ›

Her younger sister, Maureen, stabbed Rose Mary in the back 20 years ago, before being given a diagnosis of schizophrenia; she now lives in California and claims she has no mother. Lori remains close to Rose Mary, Walls said, though she lives in Manhattan, where she works at a law firm to support herself as an artist.

What happened to Jeannette Walls' mother? ›

“I was able to love my mother more as an adult than as a child, when I expected her to take care of me,” she says. “I still found her maddening,” says Walls, listing the 18 typewriters and 75 cameras she found cleaning out her mother's cottage after she died in August 2021. “But she found such joy in life.”

What happened to Jeanette's Dad? ›

After arriving at Mom and Dad's apartment, Dad tells her he is dying. They chat for awhile about old times and Jeannette realizes that, through it all, her Dad has always loved her deeply, even if his choices hurt her at times. A couple weeks later, Dad has a heart attack and dies in the hospital.

Why was Jeannette attracted to Eric? ›

In her search for home, Jeannette begins dating a man named Eric. She likes Eric because he is organized, responsible, and nothing like her father.

What happened to Maureen Walls after The Glass Castle? ›

Rose Mary told her that she would have to move out and learn to fend for herself. In response, Maureen stabbed her. Maureen Walls in The Glass Castle was arrested, convicted, and sent to a mental facility Upstate. A year later, she was released and bought a ticket to California.

How is Jeannette and Rex relationship? ›

Their relationship is extremely strong, despite all of the hardship he causes, so this relationship being put to the test makes up for the most important point of her character. And, in the end, Rex fails her.

Does Maureen have schizophrenia in The Glass Castle? ›

She was the personification of my father's demons, but he couldn't do that himself. It freaked him out that his kids could. Q: Maureen has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

What mental illness did Rosemary Walls have? ›

Walls' father, Rex, was a charming, intelligent alcoholic who was also likely suffering from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder; her mother Mary Rose is a self-described “excitement addict” who often neglected her children to focus on her painting.

Why did Jeannette leave Welch? ›

Jeannette starts to seriously consider leaving Welch at the end of her junior year in order to obtain in-state consideration by going to a New York high school her senior year. While Mom is jealous of her plan, she does not stop Jeannette.

What was Jeannette's relationship with her father in The Glass Castle? ›

Jeannette certainly cares for both parents, but her father has a special place in her heart. Jeannette has a special relationship with her father because she admired his heroicness, she got to pick Venus as her star, and he helped her and distracted her from being scared and in pain.

Why does Jeannette forgive her father? ›

At the end of the story, she meets her father for the last time and forgives him for all the bad things that had happened in her life and all the chaos. Although all of these bad things happened to her and her brother and sister because of him, she says she knew he loved her like no one else ever had.

What does Jeannette promise her father? ›

Both children see their father as weak or problematic, whereas Jeannette refuses to give up on her father's dreams and even promises her father that she never will.

What do Jeannette's parents get into a fight about? ›

Jeannette Walls's parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, fought often. Once, Rex tried to run down a pregnant Rose Mary with his car in the desert after they'd argued about how far along she was. There was the time Rose Mary and Rex argued about money and whose responsibility it was to support the family.

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