Judy L. Mandel is the award-winning author of Replacement Child – a Memoir [Seal Press, 2013]. She is also a marketing writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies for over 20 years and now heads Mandel Associates in Newington, CT.
Judy’s essays and articles have appeared in Connecticut LIFE, ASJA Monthly, Complete Wellbeing Magazine, Connecticut Authors and Publishers Newsletter, and The Southampton Review.
After the death of her parents, she knew that it was time to write the story of her family; their emotional and physical survival of a devastating plane crash that killed an older sister and left a remaining sister critically burned and close to death. It was the story that her parents and sister had prepared her to write, leaving letters and news clips, pointing her to clues of their inner lives—and her own. That book, Replacement Child, took four years of learning and soul searching to write. She says it took “four years and forty years gestation time.” She first published her memoir under her own company, Schlesinger Books, in 2009 and earned awards from Writer’s Digest and the National Indie Excellence Award. When it enjoyed extremely successful sales, it was bought by Seal Press and re-published in 2013.
Judy is a writing coach, editor and memoir mentor. She serves on the Advisory Board for The National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW) and will be offering the course Finding Your Voice in Memoir as part of NAMW. Judy will be a workshop instructor at NAMW’s first annual Write Your Memoir Now retreat this October. She is a member of The Authors Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Connecticut Author’s and Publisher’s Association. www.replacementchild.com, Blog: http://www.judymandel.com/Blog/
