Summer Reading Author Jeannette Walls to Speak at Meredith

Jeannette Walls, author of Meredith College’s 2012 Summer Reading Book selection “The Glass Castle,” will speak at Meredith early in the Fall 2012 semester. Walls’ lecture, titled “The Glass Castle: Demon Hunting and Other Life Lessons,” will be held on Monday, Aug. 27, 2012, at 7 p.m. in Jones Auditorium.

In “The Glass Castle,” Walls describes growing up in the desert of the American Southwest and then in a West Virginia mining town with her three siblings and the brilliant, unorthodox, irresponsible parents who manage at once to neglect them, love them and teach them to face their fears.

The story is at times harrowing and at times hilarious as the children go without food and indoor plumbing yet are encouraged to read Shakespeare and dream of the beautiful glass house they will all one day build. Despite all her hardships, Walls develops the determination to leave West Virginia on her own at 16, move to New York City, enroll in Barnard College and eventually become a well-known columnist for New York magazine and MSNBC.com and a television personality.

Walls’ memoir has been a New York Times best-seller for more than four years, has sold 3.5 million copies in the U.S. alone, been translated into 22 languages, and is being made into a movie by Paramount. It was named one of the “Top 10 Books of the Decade” by Amazon, and has won numerous awards.

The Presidential Lecture Series event, which is sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, is free and open to the public.

Meredith’s Summer Reading Program is now in its fourteenth year. Visit meredith.edu/summer-reading for more information.

-Melyssa Allen, Marketing