Wilson was born on October 9, 1967, in
Butte County,
California. She grew up initially in
Chico, and later in
Marin County,
California, where she attended
Tamalpais High School. After dropping out of high school, Wilson went to
San Francisco State University. She was an avant-garde playwright in
San Francisco as well as a contributor to
Frisko magazine and the
San Francisco Examiner, where she wrote a weekly advice column called "Cintra Wilson Feels Your Pain." Her first play,
Juvee, based on her experiences in juvenile hall, was produced when she was 20. She lived in
Los Angeles for a time (where she was engaged to musician
Kevin Gilbert at the time of his death), and now lives in
New York City. She was a frequent contributor for
Salon.com chronicling celebrity tabloid news and has provided frequent commentary on various award presentations, most notably the Oscars. She wrote for "Critical Shopper", a
New York Times fashion column to which she frequently contributed and has been credited with bringing together "tremendous erudition and a singular approach to an otherwise disposable area of a newspaper". Wilson is also the creator and voice of
Winter Steele, which was a
puppet television series on
MTV's
Liquid Television in the early 1990s. Her column "The Dregulator" steadily evolved from a commentary on tabloid reportage to a purely political column called "The C Word" published by the
Hartford Advocate,
The Fairfield County Weekly and the
New Haven Advocate. On December 6, 2010 Wilson wrote in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in "The C Word" entitled, "Julian Assange Isn't Doing Anything Worse Than What Our Government Is Doing". Wilson was featured in
Salon in 2008 for her political commentary on the then
Republican Party candidate for Vice President,
Sarah Palin, describing Palin as the "centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions – their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership." In her trademark satirical rhetoric, she went on to describe Palin as "the White House bunny – the most nauseating novelty confection of the evangelical mind-set since Southern "chastity balls," wherein teen girls pledge abstinence from premarital sex by ceremonially faux-marrying their own fathers." == Works ==