Photo by Theresa Keil

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (2019) and The Glass Eye (2017). 

Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl—a New York Times Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, and a TIME magazine Must-Read Book of 2019—explores Vanasco's former friendship with the man who raped her. In its starred review, Kirkus called the memoir "an extraordinarily brave work of self- and cultural reflection." The Glass Eye—honored as an Indie Next selection and an Indies Introduce selection by the American Booksellers Association—explores her grief for her late dad and his grief for his late daughter, Jeanne. The New York Times Book Review praised The Glass Eye as "hypnotic . . . a haunting exploration of perception, memory, and the complexities of grief."

Vanasco's writing has appeared in The Believer, The New York Times​, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she now lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University.