Hope Edelman is an American writer and author. She is the author of five books on motherhood: Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss (1994), Letters From Motherless Daughters: Word of Courage, Grief, and Healing (1995), Mother of My Mother: The Intricate Bond Between Generations, (1997), Motherless Mothers: How Losing a Mother Shapes the Parent You Become (2006), and her memoir, The Possibility of Everything (2009). Edelman lost her own mother in 1981 to breast cancer. Edelman, who was 17 at the time, has drawn on that experience for her books.

Edelman grew up with her two younger siblings in Spring Valley, New York, about 30 minutes from her maternal grandparent's home in Mount Vernon, New York. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in ...