Wade Rouse

Wade Rouse is the USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly and #1 internationally bestselling author of 20 books, including five memoirs, 12 novels and three holiday novellas. 2025 will be a big year with three books being published, including his latest Viola Shipman novel, The Page Turner.

Wade’s books have been translated into nearly 30 languages and have been bestsellers across the world. His novel, The Secret of Snow, was recently optioned for a TV movie.

Wade chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, as a pen name to honor the working poor Ozarks seamstress whose sacrifices changed his family’s life and whose memory inspires his fiction.

Wade’s books have been selected multiple times as Must-Reads by NBC’s Today Show as well as Michigan Notable Books of the Year. His memoirs and novels have been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today and on Chelsea Lately and chosen three times as Indie Next Picks by the nation’s independent booksellers. Wade was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (he lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (Wade was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).

His new novel, The Page Turner, (April 8 from HarperCollins) – a book that celebrates how books and reading change and save us – takes readers inside the world of publishing today and asks why we judge one another and the books we read by our collective covers. The Page Turner has received praise from Mary Kay Andrews, Steven Rowley, Annabel Monaghan and selected as the Book of the Month for Brenda Novak’s 2025 Book Box.

Wade’s first published book, America’s Boy: A Memoir – an Indie Next Pick when it was published in 2006 – is being reissued this year by Open Road Media’s Re-Discovery Lit.

His most recent memoir, Magic Season, which details how the love of baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals was the only thing to bond him and his conservative Ozarks father, was a Michigan Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Father’s Day selection, a USA Today summer reading selection, and a Best Book of Summer by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It will publish in paperback in October.

Wade’s recent novels, The Wishing Bridge and Famous in A Small Town, were both instant national bestsellers as well as summer and winter book picks by Good Morning America, Reader’s Digest and Katie Couric.

Wade is a noted humorist, whose nonfiction has been selected as part of the American Library Association’s inaugural “Rainbow List” recognizing outstanding books with significant and authentic LGBTQIA+ content for readers.

A former journalist, magazine writer and People reporter, his writing has appeared in a diverse range of publications and media, including Coastal Living, Time, All Things Considered, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Salon, Forbes, Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly.

Wade earned his B.A. from Drury University and his master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. He divides his time between Saugatuck, Michigan, and Palm Springs, California, and is also an acclaimed writing teacher who has mentored numerous students to become published authors.

Wade hosts the popular Facebook Live literary happy hour, “Wine & Words with Wade,” every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. EST on the Viola Shipman author page where he talks writing, inspiration and hope, takes readers on tours of the places that inspire his novels, throws costumed monthly office parties, and welcomes bestselling authors and publishing insiders.

For more, please visit www.violashipman.com or www.waderouse.com

THE STORY OF VIOLA SHIPMAN

My novels are a tribute to my Ozarks grandma, Viola Shipman. The jangling of her charm bracelet was as ever-present as the call of the whippoorwill, the scent of her hope chest as vivid as cedars after a spring rain, and her burnished wood recipe box stuffed with family recipes that still make my mouth water.

Her heirlooms, life, lessons and love not only inspire my fiction but also inspired me to become a writer and, I hope, the person I am today. She taught me that the simplest things in life – family, friends, faith, fun, love, and a passion for what you do – are truly the grandest gifts. My fiction is meant to honor the elders in our lives whose sacrifices and journeys helped make us who we are today. I couldn’t be prouder of my novels, which I hope reconnect you to your own family’s stories, heirlooms, histories and traditions.

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