Author
Michele Weldon

Michele Weldon has been an award-winning journalist for newspapers and magazines for more than 25 years. The author of two earlier best-selling non-fiction books, she is an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism teaching more than 200 journalism students each year in the fundamental skills courses on writing and reporting.

Her first book, a creative nonfiction memoir, I Closed My Eyes (Hazelden, 1999), has been translated into seven languages and was featured with her second book on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in June and October, 2002. She received the Rainbow House Individual Courage Award, Women’s Peacepower Award, the Visionary Award 2003 from Sarah’s Inn, The Association for Educators in Journalism &  Mass Communications Donna Allen Award in 2005 and one of the 20 Years/20 Heroes Award in 2006 for advocacy work on behalf of women and children. She won two awards from the Illinois Women’s Press Association in 2007.

Weldon’s second book, Writing to Save Your Life (Hazelden, 2001), has been translated into four languages and is used by therapists and medical professionals in the field of narrative therapy. She received a trademark for the term “scribotherapy” in 2004 and won the Chicago Women in Publishing 2002 Excellence Award in nonfiction for her second book.

This is the basis of her Writing to Save Your Life Workshops given in Chicago and around the country since 1999 and is considered important to the field of narrative therapy. Weldon was a co-investigator on a study at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University on the role of written narrative in the physical and emotional health of caregivers.

As a freelancer, she has written news, features, columns and editorials for scores of major daily newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsday and Dallas Times Herald; as well as major magazines such as Woman’s Day, Parenting, Dial, Seventeen, Writer’s Digest and many others. She has been writing a regular column since 1996 for West Suburban Living magazine.

A former staff journalist, Weldon has worked as managing editor at North Shore magazine in the Chicago area; ADWEEK in Chicago; Fairchild Publications in Chicago and was a columnist and feature writer for five years at the Dallas Times Herald in Dallas, Texas.

Weldon has delivered more than 150 keynotes across the country and Canada. She has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television shows in the United States, Europe and Canada including “Oprah,” “Jenny Jones,” “NBC’s Later Today,” “ABC Sunday Morning,” and BBC-TV.

The mother of three sons, Weldon lives in Chicago. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism from Northwestern. She has served on the board of directors of Journalism & Women Symposium, an international non-profit organization for women in print, broadcast and online journalism as well as university-level educators in journalism. Weldon is also a member of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communications, Illinois Woman’s Press Association, Society of Midland Authors, Association for Women Journalists, National Association of Women Writers, Chicago Women in Publishing and Children’s Memorial Guild.