Photo by Theresa Keil

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (2019) and The Glass Eye (2017). Both memoirs are published in the US by Tin House Books and in the UK by Duckworth Books.

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 dad and his grief for his 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​, NewYorker.com, TheAtlantic.com, 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. She is working on her third book.