Jo Maeder

Author

2020: The Ups and Downs, a New Year’s Eve Invitation, and Wedding Photos!

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A Year Like No Other How many times in 2020 did you say: “What a year!” I hope you didn’t lose a loved one to Covid-19 or meet with financial ruin. Surely, someone reading this has and you have my deepest sympathies. Please keep reading. I have something to invite you to at the end that might be […]

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Q&A: Jill McCorkle on dolls, dollhouses, tiny objects and what they have to do with writing and life

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    “I have always loved dolls. And yes, there are still within the love, those that have creeped me out!” – Jill McCorkle Jill McCorkle is a bestselling, award-winning author of unforgettable novels and short stories. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. […]

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Life Works in Mysterious Ways: How losing my last sibling gave me more than just a new perspective

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I once wrote an essay for AOL about getting through Mother’s Day when Mom is no longer here (the essay is no longer here as well—so much for everything living forever online). Now I’m faced with Mother’s Day without my brother, Art. Every day without him has been hard, but we always shared memories of “Mama […]

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What is the #1 way to increase happiness?

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Life is not a bowl of cherries for anyone. We must take the bitter with the sweet, we’re told. But some people seem to have an innate melancholy they can never shake. Studies now show that we stay at the same level of happiness our entire life. There’s only one thing that’s been proven to […]

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Mother’s Day without Mama

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This Mother’s Day, 2016, marks the eleventh one without Mama Jo. It’s always been tinged with sadness since her passing, but this one will be particularly hard. I recently completed reading and editing the audiobook of When I Married My Mother. I read it once. Didn’t like the way I did my mother’s parts. Re-read them […]

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Buried words of wisdom

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  I’m going through two trunks of stuff related to a documentary I once tried to make about my aunt, Julie Arden, and her companion Charlotte Brooks. I’m determined to whittle it down to one big box. It should be easy. Just don’t look too closely. Keep the essentials. Toss, toss, toss. I find scraps […]

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Q&A: Teresa Engebretsen, the Sabbatical Chef, on How to Speak French and Indulge Your Inner Francophile

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Teresa Engebretsen has been teaching French to middle school students at Durham Academy in Durham, NC, for over 30 years. Often she takes her students on field trips to France. Her blog The Sabbatical Chef began when she took a sabbatical from teaching in 2008, lived in Arles, and worked with a French chef. It’s […]

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HOLIDAY REMINISCENCES AND REGRETS

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An adapted excerpt from the chapter “Watching a Photograph Slowly Fade” from When I Married My Mother “Are we putting up a Christmas tree this year?” Mama Jo asked when our third Thanksgiving as roommates rolled around. I groaned and was sorry I did. The first year we lived together, after uncovering the ornaments of […]

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