Jeannette Walls on American Spark

Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, Half-Broke Horses, and The Silver Star. She chats with May-Lily Lee about her memoir The Glass Castle, now a major motion picture, and reveals why it took 20 years to write. Half-Broke Horses was a follow-up to her memoir, a true-life novel about her grandmother. She discusses how by the time she started her next book - The Silver Star - she had to re-think her notions of what fiction writing can be. Plus, Jeannette Walls offers up Life 101.

“The whole idea of making things up has really fascinated me as a former journalist who’s just always clung to the truth… the truth can be kinda a squishy critter and it takes on a bunch of different shapes.”

“You can go around feeling sorry for yourself about what you did or didn’t get, about what was or wasn’t done for you, or you can take those past events in [ ] life and put them to work for you.”