Hope Edelman (born June 17, 1964) is an American non-fiction author, essayist, and writing instructor. Early life and education Edelman is the author of eight non-fiction books, including Motherless Daughters; Motherless Mothers; the memoir The Possibility of Everything and her most recent book, The Aftergrief. Her writing and teaching has garnered her acclaim as a writer, writing instructor, and expert on early parent loss. Edelman was born in New York City and spent most of her childhood in suburban Spring Valley, New York. The death of her mother to breast cancer in 1981 was a pivotal moment in her adolescence and became the subject of much of her early writing. She obtained her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. While living in the Chicago area, she interned at Outside magazine. After graduation, she took an editorial job at Whittle Communications in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she discovered a love for the personal essay. She then attended The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she studied with Carl Klaus, Mary Swander, and Carol Bly, earning a master's degree in nonfiction writing in 1992. In 1992 she moved to New York City to write her first book, Motherless Daughters. In 1997, she relocated to Los Angeles, where she married Uzi Eliahou and raised two daughters, Maya and Eden. She has lived in Topanga Canyon, California, for 24 years. Professional career Edelman's first book, Motherless Daughters, was started and sold in proposal form to Addison-Wesley when she was still a graduate student at the University of Iowa. It was published in May 1994. A 17-city tour and extensive media coverage followed, pushing the book to the top of bestseller lists in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Motherless Daughters spent a total of 24 weeks on the New York Times list and rose to #1 in paperback. The book has since been published in fourteen countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, China, Korea, Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic. Moved by the volume and content of thousands of handwritten letters she received from readers, Edelman edited Letters from Motherless Daughters the following year. In 1999, she published Mother of My Mother, an examination of grandmother-granddaughter relationships. Motherless Mothers, an exploration and explanation of how motherless women parent their children differently from the general population, was released by HarperCollins in 2006. In 2009, Edelman published