Jeannie Vanasco is an American writer. [1] She is the author of A Silent Treatment, a memoir about her mother's repeated use of the silent treatment, [2] Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl, a memoir about her former friendship with the man who raped her, [3] and The Glass Eye, a memoir about her father and his deceased daughter, Vanasco's namesake. [4] She teaches English at Towson University.
Raised in Sandusky, Ohio, [5] Vanasco described her childhood as idyllic. [6] While at Sandusky High School, she edited the school newspaper [7] and then studied creative writing at Northwestern University where she received the Jean Meyer Aloe Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. [8] She earned her MFA in poetry from New York University [9] and her MFA in memoir from Hunter College. [10]
After graduating from Northwestern University in 2006, Vanasco moved to New York City to intern for The Paris Review . [11] She later became an assistant editor at Lapham's Quarterly .[ citation needed ] Between 2006 and 2011, she contributed reviews to the Times Literary Supplement , [12] and in 2011 she began blogging for The New Yorker . [13] In 2017 she published her first memoir, The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers named one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of the year, [14] and which the American Booksellers Association selected for its Indie Next [15] and Indies Introduce [16] programs.
In 2019, she published her second memoir, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl, which Amazon named one of the twenty best books of the year. [17] An editor for the Amazon Book Review said that Vanasco's second memoir "adds a different dimension to the #MeToo conversation—one more intimate, insidious, and full of improbable grace." [18] Writing for Time , Laurie Halse Anderson called Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl "bold, unsettling, timely." [19]
In 2025, she published her third memoir, A Silent Treatment, which Booklist in its starred review described as "A beautiful gift to all who have struggled to care for a loved one in the way they needed." [2]
Vanasco is an associate professor of English at Towson University where she teaches creative writing. [20]
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