Maryanne Vollers is an American author, journalist and ghostwriter. Her first book, Ghosts of Mississippi, was a finalist in non-fiction for the 1995 National Book Award. ^{[1] [2]} Her many collaborations include the memoirs of Hillary Rodham Clinton, ^[3] Dr. Jerri Nielsen, ^[4] Sissy Spacek, ^[5] Ashley Judd, ^[6] and Billie Jean King. ^[7] Her second book on domestic terrorism, Lone Wolf:  Eric Rudolph – Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw, was published in 2006. ^{[8] [9]} A former editor at Rolling Stone ^[10] she has written articles for publications such as Esquire, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Time, ^[11] and The New York Times Magazine. ^[12]

Life

Vollers was born in Yorktown Heights, New York, the daughter of a New York City fire chief and a court clerk. She attended Yorktown High School, and graduated from Brown University in Providence, RI in 1977. ^[13] She has lived in Nairobi, Kenya, and Johannesburg, South Africa, where she worked as a Time magazine stringer, radio newscaster, and field producer for NBC News, covering wars, politics, health and cultural issues across the continent and around the world. ^[14]

Once back in the states, Vollers covered domestic terrorism, including articles on the Oklahoma City Bombing, the militia movement, ^[15] anti-abortion violence, the trial of white supremacist Byron de La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers, which resulted in her book, Ghosts of Mississippi, followed a decade later by Lone Wolf, on the Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber, Eric Rudolph. ^[16]

Now based in Montana, she and her husband, documentary photographer, director, and producer William Campbell create news features and documentaries on political, social and environmental issues. Their PBS-ITVS documentary, Wolves in Paradise, was about the human costs and benefits of the reintroduction of wolves in the Yellowstone region. ^{[17] [18]}

Work with Yeonmi Park

Vollers co-authored the biography of North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, whose claims about her life as a child in North Korea have been questioned by journalists, professors of Korean studies, and fellow North Korean defectors. The 2015 book titled In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom – written in English and published in the United States – contained a different and more negative account of her life in North Korea than the stories Park had previously told to audiences in South Korea. ^[19]

Before the book was published, an SBS journalist who had previously worked with Park on a documentary found numerous inconsistencies in Park's stories of life in Korea. ^[20] Vollers defended Park from these accusations, stating that most of Park's jumbled recollections were due to her not yet being fluent in English, and that she was being targeted by a North Korean government smear campaign. ^[21] A 2023 article in the The Washington Post similarly found inconsistencies in many of Park's stories about life in North Korea. ^[22]

Works

• All In: Billie Jean King, An Autobiography; Knopf, 2021 (collaborator).
• In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom; by Yeonmi Park with Maryanne Vollers, Penguin Random House, 2015. ^[23]
• Money: Master the Game, by Tony Robbins, 2014 (collaborator)
• My Extraordinary Ordinary Life; by Sissy Spacek with Maryanne Vollers, Hyperion 2012.
• All That is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir; by Ashley Judd with Maryanne Vollers, Ballantine, 2011.
• Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw; by Maryanne Vollers. HarperCollins Publishers, November 2006.) ^[24]
• Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Simon & Schuster, 2003, (collaborator).
• Profiles in Courage for Our Time, edited by Caroline Kennedy,  Hyperion Books, 2002; (Contributor).
• Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole; by Jerri Nielsen with Maryanne Vollers; Talk Miramax, 2001.
• Ghosts of Mississippi:  The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South; by Maryanne Vollers, Little Brown, 1995.

Awards

• National Book Award, finalist, nonfiction: Ghosts of Mississippi, 1995
• Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, finalist, 1995.
• New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, finalist, 1996.
• The Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Award, 1996.

References