It takes about fourteen seconds of speaking with Jennifer Rudolph Walsh to understand why Prince Harry describes her as his fairy godmother. The co-owner of Godmothers, the Southern California bookstore-to-the-stars, starts our conversation with an expression of relief. “I’m so oddly refreshed by the fact that you wanted to do a phone call,” she says. Zooms are not for her. Even so, she’s breaking one of her policies, which is no scheduled calls unless you’re her doctor. “People are like, but how will I reach you? It’s like, okay, here’s the system. You try me. If it’s not a good time, I’ll try you back. Okay? Let’s go with that. It worked for 50 years perfectly.” She’s warm, open, calls me “sweetheart” with an easy familiarity, and wants to spend as much time juicing up her friends and acquaintances as she does talking about herself. Whitney Wolf Herd is “brave” and “loving”; Amanda Knox is “a modern day Victor Frankl”; her store’s head of community engagement, Riley Reed, is “beautiful, incredible, smart, brave, funny, kind.”
She has the magnetic selling power one might expect from a woman who, in her past life, spent three decades ascending to the highest rungs of the publishing world as a literary agent to the stars, working with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, Dani Shapiro, Ariana Huffington, and Meghan Markle. She was the head of WME’s Worldwide Literary, Lectures, and Conference Divisions, founded the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, launched Winfrey’s “The Life You Want” tour, and served on the board of the National Book Foundation.
Five years ago Rudolph Walsh began what she calls her “sacred pause,” when she left WME and New York. The pause lasted until nine months ago, when she opened Godmothers in Summerland, California with Victoria Jackson, cosmetics entrepreneur and author of the book We All Worry, Now What?, in September 2024. “I realized, I don’t miss the book business, I don’t miss managing people, but I do miss book people. I miss the tribe of book lovers,” she says. “And I miss gathering together to talk about what we’re reading and what it reminds us of.”
The pair took the name from Prince Harry’s assertion at the Beverly Hills launch party for his memoir, Spare, that Jackson, Walsh, and Oprah Winfrey were his “fairy godmothers.” The celebrations for their own store opening spanned a weekend, with Winfrey, Meghan, and Harry in attendance, along with other starry locals including Jane Lynch and Portia de Rossi. They debuted a Founders Circle program, which offers such benefits as members-only game nights and a monthly Sunday tea, early tickets and VIP seating at in-store events, plus four members-only events each month (last week’s was a cocktail meet-and-greet with Kevin Kwan), custom book recommendations, and 15% off of everything. She and Reed also run a book club, open to all—though with a waitlist. Next up: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.
Here, from her house in the hills, where she lives with her husband, two mini donkeys, two micro cows, a pair of goats—all six of which she bottle fed—and four dogs (she also has three children and two grandchildren, one of whom was born just last week), she talks about her life transition, her beloved and glittering social circle, and the books she can’t stop thinking about.
Vanity Fair: What has surprised you about being a bookstore owner?
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh: The hunger is really the thing that has surprised and delighted me the most. Victoria and I really built this—we say it’s not a store, it’s a storefront for magic—we built this storefront because we needed it, because we wanted a place to dive into the deep end about things that matter, about stories about ideas, and to be open-hearted and open-minded around these discussions.
Besides, obviously, your love of books, how has your former life as an agent translated to running the store?
My evolution is that I was exclusively a literary agent for many, many years. And then in 2014, I co-produced Oprah Winfrey’s “The Life You Want Tour.” We went on the road, and it was during those three months that I fell in love with the idea of hearing stories together, sharing stories together. I really was bitten by a love bug on this where I was like, oh my gosh, it’s not enough to actually read books—which is amazing—but writers write them in solitude, and readers often read them in solitude. There’s something alchemical that happens when we’re in a shared space, sharing stories. So for the last six years, my work in New York, I was really braiding my love of culture with my love of reading and then my love of live events and storytelling. In a way, Godmothers has taken all my favorite pieces of my previous chapter, which I was living at scale, and recreated it at intimacy—almost like a perfect dollhouse version of all of the things that I’ve loved and been putting into the world my whole career.
What year did you leave New York?
I left WME January 1st, 2020.
And did you go straight to California?
I had originally planned to take Together Live, my touring women’s conference, and turn it into more of a full-time thing for me. I had launched a spring tour. Very, very soon after we launched our tickets, people started talking about COVID. I shut down the tour even before COVID shut down the world. I had eight employees that had left WME to come with me. There was a lot of responsibility. In my final three or four weeks before closing down Together Live, I got every one of those people jobs, which is something I was very proud of. I felt like my final act was to do the good goodbye, as I’d always done my whole entire career. And finally, the last person I gave the good goodbye to was me.
I had bought an apartment in San Francisco in 2019 as I was wrapping up my time at WME, because I thought I was going to go directly into something else that involved San Francisco. I was imagining this giant traveling life. I only knew how to live at the pace of culture. And what I discovered was that this part of my life was learning to live at the pace of nature.
I was like, Oh God, what’s going to happen to that apartment because I’m not even going to do that job in San Francisco. All of a sudden, one morning, I wake up and I go, oh, I know what I’m going to do with that apartment in San Francisco. I’m going to move there. And so I moved with my husband and my son. The apartment was right in the Presidio. Every morning I would get my coffee and go into the Presidio and spend half the day communing with the trees. Everybody was like, Can’t wait to see what you’re going to do next! And I would say, well, That’s about you. I’m not competing with my former story.
You’re like, I’m smelling a eucalyptus tree right now. I’ll talk to you later.
I’m actually a tree hugger, literally. I got so free. I was feral, just out there among the trees and trying to understand the overstory and knowing a sort of peace that I hadn’t known before, and also recalibrating my nervous system. I used to say to people, come to me for the four Cs. The four Cs were creation, contracts, conflicts or crisis, and then celebration. What I realized was I don’t really want people only bringing me conflict all the time. I don’t really want people only bringing me chaos all the time. I learned that certain elements that I thought were my personality were more my acquired personality.
My husband will laugh at this. We’ve been together for 40 years, but in San Francisco was the first time that I realized—and this shows you what kind of wonderful wife I am—it was the first time I realized that his happiness affected mine. In New York, our life was so big, our kids and our jobs and running in different directions, whereas in San Francisco, it was just the three of us, and my husband and I weren’t working. And I would come home and he was so unhappy. The city was a mismatch for him. If he was a flower, I watched his petals fall. We’ve literally been together since I’m 18. I’d never seen that. So in April of 2021, we rented a house in Montecito. Two weeks into our one month rental in Montecito, Patrick said, I’m not leaving here, just so you know.
You obviously have such a powerful community there now; did you already, when you moved?
Not at all. I did not move here with the community. I moved here with a longing for community. I obviously had a few friends, but first of all, I just came here as Jen Walsh. There’s no JRW. The thing that I love about the West Coast is that people don’t ask what you do. They ask what you love to do. I came here anonymously in the best possible way and found friends that love to hike, friends that have donkeys, because I have donkeys, friends that like Mahjong. Having no workplace and no kids [at home], you don’t realize how much of your social interaction comes from work and being a mom. I always used to say, I’m a useful engine. And when I was no longer useful and no longer an engine, what was I? I’m so glad that I lived long enough to answer that question, which is me. I call myself Cali Jen, here. Nobody ever called me Jen, my whole life. And here I introduce myself and I go, hi, I’m Jennifer. People say, Hey Jen! I’m just Jen here. And I love it so much.
How would you describe the difference, if there is one, between how readers interact with books in California versus in New York?
We’re not a monolith on either side, but I think if I had to make a generalization, readers in New York read with their heads and readers in California read with their hearts.
I see that there’s a wait list for the Founders Circle. So it seems like it’s quite popular.
Oh my gosh. It’s one of these reciprocal relationships that’s so woven into the fabric of Godmothers that it’s hard to imagine there ever could not have been a Founders Circle. A group of people who love that Godmothers is here and want it to always be here, and pay us, for a family $350 a month and for an individual $200 a month. We thought if we could have a group of families and individuals that could do that, then we would know that at least we can pay the lighting bill and make sure that the cable stays on and that all the booksellers can keep coming to work, even if nobody comes in one day. Summerland only has 2000 residents. Obviously it’s not for somebody for whom that would be a hardship, of course, but if everybody shared the load a little bit, we felt like it could make us exhale and hopefully ensure our longevity.
We thought it would take six months to a year to fill, and it took six weeks. We already have 200 people on the wait list.
I have heard a rumor that you have pretty lovely accommodations available for your authors.
You got that right, sister. We have an absolutely magical author cottage in the back of our property. We put authors up there. We get to spoil them rotten, and it’s a wonderful way to honor our authors.
Anything about the cottage you want to highlight?
Well, it’s designed by Martyn [Lawrence] Bullard. There’s a beautiful little breakfast nook, we fill it with so many treats, and we have a little deck with a table and chairs, and we’re just a block from the ocean so you can hear the ocean. It’s really magic. Our food truck opens at 8:00 AM, so it’s always nice when the authors stay an extra day or so to see them down by our food truck, with their computers typing away at one of our outdoor tables. It’s a beautiful addition to our community to have the authors there.
The one detail I got about the cottage is that the pillows are quite luxe.
Everything out there is luxe. It’s the Martyn Bullard special. It’s meant to feel like a Four Seasons bed. Everybody says it’s heaven.
What does a book have to have to make it onto the Godmothers’ stage?
Well, it’s that perfect match of art and commerce. I think if Godmothers had an unstated theme, it’s transformation. We really all believe in the power of transformation and anything can happen. And so you won’t find a lot of doom and gloom. It doesn’t mean there’s not tough things being shared, but we tend to share them through the lens of the possible.
Is there anyone, or any kind of book, that you wouldn’t ever have for an event?
I never say never, but I will say, I’m not looking for right and wrong. It’s a little bit like Rumi said, there is a field beyond right doing and wrong doing. I’ll meet you there. I think we’re a little bit of that field. It’s also more reflective of where Victoria and I are at as human beings. We’re more focused on what we have in common, what we can learn from each other, how we can understand one another’s differences, what our lived experience has taught us. There are other places to go for division—and it’s important to understand—but it’s just that’s not what you’re going to get at Godmothers.
You played Mahjong with Meghan on With Love, Meghan. Has she ever made an appearance at the Founder Circle game nights?
No. Although she is quite an excellent game player.
I read that you joked with Harry, before he turned 40, that once he did you’d have to find new 30-somethings to hang out with.
I am very into multi-generational friendships. It brings me life, it brings me understanding. One of my newest dear friends is Whitney Wolf Herd, who’s just turned 35. I say to all of my younger friends, it’s not me being the godmother and them being the goddaughters. Sometimes it’s the reverse. They’re mother, daughter, sister, all of them to me. That’s why I love intergenerational friendships. My dear friends go all the way into their eighties. It just keeps you alive. To me, it’s about feeling present and leaning into curiosity and openness. I’ve just learned so much from my friends of all ages. And I really have friends in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, and into 80. Norma Kamali, who’s a dear friend of mine, I’m going to be spending her 80th birthday with her in London. Every decade comes with its rewards and its treasure and its heartbreak. And I love to have a front row view to all of those storylines.
Do you give your friends books as presents?
Yeah, often.
It’s such a personal, intimate thing to give someone a book.
It depends on where somebody is on their journey. If somebody had a very, very difficult thing happen, I would give them Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. If somebody is just coming to question certain elements of their life, I might give them The Surrender Experiment [by Michael Alan Singer]. I’m a matchmaker in every element of my life, including the person to the book. My niece came in, she wanted to buy a book, and I’m like, obviously, I’m buying the book for you. She was off to Amsterdam for her junior year abroad. I gave her Patti Smith‘s Just Kids. It’s just that alchemy.
Do you have any tips for hosting a successful book centric gathering with people who might not know each other?
The great thing about a book is that you don’t need to know each other. It is the small hinge that opens the giant door of connection. I host a book club at the store. Our last book was Rick Rubin‘s The Creative Act, which I love. I went around the room and I said, before you read this book, what did you feel about the word creativity, and having finished the book, how do you now feel about creativity? It’s interesting how fraught the word creativity is for people. By the time we went around the room and everybody shared those two feelings about creativity and the word artist, it was like we all knew each other better. I always try to come up with a heart opener that isn’t about making people look smart, because that really shuts people down. [The poet] Mark Nepo says the longest distance anybody travels is the 27 inches from their head to their heart.
What are Montecitans reading as we head into summer?
Top ten selling at Godmothers right now: I Am Maria; Free: My Search for Meaning; Emperor of Gladness; Sunrise on the Reaping; The Let Them Theory; The Tell; Martyr!; Best Short Stories 2024; Librarians of Lisbon; Great Big Beautiful Life.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert, Ocean Vuong‘s new book, Emperor of Gladness—I read it so sparingly because I don’t want it to end. And I’m obsessed with Jen Hatmaker’s Awake. It’s phenomenal. You could think, oh, yet another woman who found out her husband was having this other life and got her life broken apart. What’s different about Jen is her full accountability in the co-creation of both her life going off-path and then the steering her life back to the path that was meant for her. And she’s so fucking funny. Everything Is Tuberculosis. Isola. Dream Count. On Our Best Behavior. The Anxious Generation. The Backyard Bird Chronicles. And Keith McNally‘s I Regret Almost Everything.
What’s your ideal reading setting: time of day, time of year, where you are?
Reading is breathing to me, so I don’t really have that. But I love my bed. I’m the happiest in the world when I’m in my giant king size bed surrounded by books and dogs and kids. It’s not a place where I go with sadness. It’s a place where I am in joy. When we moved here, originally, I put just some couches and chairs outside on my outdoor deck that overlooks the mountains and the ocean, and I never sat out there. And then one day I realized, I know what I can do, and I put a bed up there. It’s literally paradise. Heaven is a place on Earth, is all I can tell you.
I think for so many people—I can certainly feel this way—identity is so wrapped up in a job and a job title.
At the core of it is my sense of worthiness doesn’t come from my identity. I’m not somebody who fights for relevance. I’ve had relevance before. I have a little local relevance now, which feels actually amazing, but it’s not a measure of my value as a human being. And so if you could get off that relevance thing, then it helps a lot to just be.
I will say that I found a lot of my relationships that I thought were real were just transactional. And that was a little painful. I joke that it’s like The Music Man. I was a little bit like the kid that runs to the edge of town, and the music man is leaving with all the money and all the things, and he kind of yells out to the music man, “Can I just ask you one question?” “Sure, kid.” “Was there ever a band?” I’m a little bit like the little kid going, “Was there ever a band?” But the good news is now I’m in a band.
Through your career, you have worked with and been friends with household names. The most recognizable of the recognizable. Is that something that you have had to figure out how to navigate?
All the people that I’m friends with are a vibrational match for me. Often we have a purpose or a mission alignment. We have the same sense of humor. I have a lot of strong friends who are defined, and I am also strong and defined.
Coming full circle, with Harry, who called you his fairy godmother—what is it about Harry and Meghan that felt vibrationally right?
People have been calling me “fairy godmother” for many, many years. Sue Monk Kidd gave me a magic fairy wand that sat on my desk for a decade. When you’re a doula for people’s books, and you’re the frontline reader—I assume you have a literary agent, you know how intimate that relationship can be. And so “fairy godmother” has been in the zeitgeist around the kind of work that people like me and your literary agent do for authors. Especially for first time authors. You’re going into a dark tunnel, essentially, and it’s mid-wifeing. You’re helping a baby be born.
So with them, it’s really the same as with all of my other dear friends, which is just, as I said, values alignment, mission alignment, very purpose-driven, community oriented, and loves to laugh, loves food, just loves dogs, loves animals. Shared passion, shared purpose, and a love of nature as well.
I’m glad that you’re so surrounded by that now—nature and the people who love it.
It really feels like, wow. I guess my storyline had an unexpected pivot. I always thought the plot twists were for other people, but it ends up there was one for me too.
Probably for a long time it felt like you knew exactly what you were doing, and what life was going to be like. And then it shifts.
Completely. I really had thought the only way my life is going to shift is tragedy. I didn’t imagine that I could have a shift that had to do with joy and peace, and that I would be Cali Jen, starting my day literally shoveling cow shit with a giant smile on my face.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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