In times like these, everyone can use
A Cup of Comfort.
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A Cup of Comfort
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A Cup of Comfort
Inspiration
A Cup of Comfort
Christmas
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Courage
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About the Contributors:
A Cup of Comfort
A Cup of Comfort for
Friends
A Cup of Comfort for
Women
A Cup of Comfort for
Mothers & Daughters
A Cup of Comfort for
Inspiration
A Cup of Comfort for
Christmas
A Cup of Comfort for
Courage
A Cup of Comfort for
Teachers
A Cup of Comfort
Contributors
Jamie D'Antoni has contributed numerous articles to national magazines, such as the Voice, and works as the managing editor of a weekly newspaper. She has published three online novels, Beyond the Call, Molly, and Deceptions. Jamie currently lives on the Pacific Coast in Washington, where she is working on her fourth novel.
Stephanie Barrow could never decide which of her two passions to focus on-writing or painting-so she pursued both. She currently works as an illustrator and sometime feature writer for the Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene, Oregon. She lives near her children and two grandchildren in a former industrial warehouse that she has converted into an art studio.
Teri Bayus lives in Pismo Beach, California. She has owned a public relations firm for more than a decade and writes a humor/travel column for What's On magazine. She produces Silver Treasures, a television show featuring people over the age of eighty telling their amazing life stories, and she is currently working on a screenplay about the woes of teenage life.
Renie Szilak Burghardt was born in Hungary and immigrated to the United States in 1951. She lives in the country, where she enjoys nature, reading, and family activities. Her writing has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Whispers from Heaven and Listening to the Animals.
Toņa Morales-Calkins is a freelance writer living in Northern California. When not writing, Toņa works as a bookstore manager and trainer. "Guiding Lights" is her first published story. She is currently working on two novels.
Barbara Campbell was born and raised in the southern United States. She and her husband John moved with their six children to Australia in 1975. When the grandchildren started arriving, Barbara began storytelling. Now with 11 grandchildren and most of the family living in and around Brisbane, she finds time to put the stories to paper.
Judi Chapman is a freelance writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Her short stories, which have been published nationwide, celebrate the joys and mysteries of life. She hails from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Bobbie Christmas is a book editor and coauthor of The Legend of Codfish and Potatoes. She is the current president of the Georgia Writers Association and owner of Zebra Communications, a literary services company.
Susan Kirsch Duncan is the author of Levittown: The Way We Were, as well as several nonfiction stories. She lives with her family in New York.
Susan Farr-Fahncke is a writer, wife, and mother of four living in Utah. Her inspirational stories have appeared in many books and magazines. She is currently working on a book-length collection of her stories.
Rusty Fischer is the author of more than 100 published articles, essays, stories, and poems, which have appeared in anthologies, national magazines, and online publications. He is the author of Creative Writing Made Easy, the bestselling series for students and teachers of writing, as well as of four Buzz On reference guides. Rusty has also written for several Internet portals.
Lynda Kudelko Foley lives in Northridge, California, with her husband and two sons. The 1994 Northridge earthquake motivated Lynda to seriously pursue writing. Shortly thereafter, she won a screenwriting internship at Paramount Studios. Her short fiction has been included in anthologies by Pocket Books and Aunt Lute Books.
Jenna Glatzer is a full-time freelance writer, the editor-in-chief of AbsoluteWrite.com, and the public relations director for the upcoming film Curse of the Dog Women. Her work has appeared in hundreds of magazines and Web sites, including Salon.com, Writer's Digest, and American Profile. She is currently working on a children's book.
Theresa Marie Heim is a graduate student living in Santa Monica, California. A freelance writer, she contributes articles and essays to online and print publications.
Lynn M. Huffstetler is an award-winning author of outdoor hunting stories, inspirational and nostalgic tales, and science-fiction stories and novels. He lives in the east Tennessee mountains.
David Kirkland is a former schoolteacher, welfare worker, banker, and real-estate developer who has lived in Guam, New York, Hawaii, and North Carolina. He currently resides in Missouri, where he is at work on a Civil War novel set in East Tennessee.
M. A. Kosak teaches creative writing to elementary school children in after-school enrichment programs. As a freelance writer, she centers her work on personal experience, particularly adoption, infertility, education, and personal relationships. Originally from New Jersey, she resides in San Diego, California, with her husband and three adopted sons.
Susanmarie Lamagna is a bilingual Spanish kindergarten teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. Growing up in a busy but loving family, she learned the value of sharing not only one's things but also one's self, a lesson she is passing along to her students-who, she says, also teach her.
Helene LeBlanc is a two-time winner of the Jessamyn West fiction award and the author of Summer Boy and From the Grape to the Glass. Helene lives on a vineyard in Napa Valley, California, where she is currently writing a biographical novel about her family's experiences during the Depression.
Ella Magee is the pseudonym of a writer and college instructor.
Joy Hewitt Mann grew up near Georgian Bay, where her story "Buried Treasure" takes place. She shares a mill house surrounded by nature's treasures with her husband, Wayne, and their three children. She has published two books of poetry and one fiction collection, and she has contributed to over 200 magazines internationally.
Dolores Martin, a native of Illinois, lives with her daughter in Colorado Springs, where she works as a freelance writer. She recently completed her first children's book, The Land That Might Have Been. She has three children and two grandchildren.
Louise Mathewson holds a master's degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University and writes about the sacred moments found in the ordinary experiences of daily life. She and her husband have two adult children and live in Longmont, Colorado.
Anthony Merlocco lives in a small, rural community east of Toronto with Yvette, his wife of 35 years. They have two adult children. Anthony enjoys writing, composing music, playing piano, fishing, and country life.
Lynn Ruth Miller is an award-winning fiction writer, journalist, essayist, and columnist. She has worked in public relations and served as the promotions director of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her column "Thoughts While Walking the Dog" appears regularly in the Pacifica Tribune. She teaches adults in San Mateo County, California.
Ed Nickum is the author of dozens of short stories and is currently working on a horror novel. He makes his home in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife and two daughters.
Mary Marcia Lee Norwood is a wife, mother, grandmother, and professional storyteller. Her work as a writer and photojournalist has been featured in newspapers and international magazines, including Chosen Child magazine, Adoption Today, the Red Thread, the Kansas City Star, the Examiner, and Mother & Child Reunion. A former teacher and coach, Marcia served as the regional coordinator for the educational outreach program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Laureeann Porter is internationally recognized in the hospice care field as a founder of Hospice. She has a passion for nostalgic storytelling, and her writing has been published in regional magazines. She often makes appearances as an oral storyteller in regional bookstores and libraries. Originally a Bostonian, she now lives in Florida.
Norman Prady first began to write at the age of nine when his father brought home a secondhand Underwood typewriter. He's had successful careers as both a newspaper reporter and an advertising executive sidelining as a freelance journalist and essayist. He recently completed a collection of autobiographical essays and sketches as well as a children's alphabet book.
Dr. Kathryn Thompson Presley, a retired English professor, has published numerous short stories, essays, and poems. She enjoys reading, speaking to women's groups, and playing Scrabble with her grandchildren. She has been married for almost fifty years to Roy Presley, a retired school superintendent.
LeAnn Ralph is a staff writer for two weekly newspapers who also writes freelance stories about what it would have been like to grow up on the dairy farm homesteaded by her Norwegian great-grandparents in the late 1800s. She resides in Wisconsin, the state of her birth and childhood.
Kimberly Ripley is the author of Breathe Deeply, This Too Shall Pass, a collection of tales on the trials and triumphs of parenting teenagers. She lives with her husband and their five children in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Edie Scher became a collector of tales after listening to stories told at the kitchen table as a child. She loved retelling these stories and soon began writing them down. Her essays and articles have been published in several national magazines and newspapers, including Rodale and Hearst publications and the New York Times.
Bluma Schwarz is a semi-retired mental-health counselor who published her first memoir at the age of 69 in Iowa Woman. Her stories have appeared in Potpourri, Potomac Review, AIM, and elsewhere. She continues to write and to counsel the mentally ill on a part-time basis in Florida, where she has made her home since 1964.
Trond Sjovoll, a native of Norway, has lived in the United States since 1985. He holds a master's degree in speech communication from the University of Wisconsin; he also earned degrees in English and political science in Norway. Trond works as a personal coach and leadership consultant. He lives with his wife, Rasha, and their daughters on the island of Hawaii.
Elaine Slater's wide and varied writing career began with short mystery stories and branched out into poetry, drama, short fiction, and how-to books. Her work has won several awards and has been widely anthologized. She resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mary Helen Straker is a graduate of DePauw University and a former newspaper and magazine writer. She has completed a novel and is currently writing a memoir. She and her husband live with their four children in Zanesville, Ohio.
Karen Thorstad is a licensed interior designer and cofounder of an Internet business who collects and writes stories about spiritual, paranormal, and transformational experiences. She lives with her husband, Ross, and their springer spaniel, Clyde, in British Columbia, Canada. They have six children and eight grandchildren.
Diane Meredith Vogel lives on the farm she shared with her late husband in rural mid-Michigan. In addition to running the farm, raising goats, and serving as a 4-H volunteer, she manages an Internet business, attends community college, and writes. The mother of three grown children, Diane recently remarried.
Denise Wahl is a freelance writer and humor columnist. She lives in Michigan with her husband and four children.
Bob Welch is a columnist with the Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene, Oregon. He is the author of five books, including the Gold Medallion-winning Father for All Seasons.
Jamie Winship worked as a police officer for five years before leaving to earn a master's degree in English as a Second Language. He currently works at the Bandung Alliance International School in West Java, Indonesia.
Lou Killian Zywicki is a freelance writer who also teaches writing, literature, and interpersonal communications at the Secondary Technical Center in Duluth, Minnesota. She lives in a nature paradise south of Carlton, Minnesota, with her husband, Ernie. She is the mother of four children.
About the Editor
Colleen Sell has long believed in the power of story to heal, guide, enrapture, and transcend the human spirit. Storytelling is both her profession and her passion. She has worked as an author, book editor, journalist, magazine editor, copywriter, publicist, novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.