Joanne Fedler

Tuesday 15 December 2020 Mum diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. SHOULD I GO BE WITH MUM? From across the seas that divided us, over the next seven months, that question would twist inside me, helplessly, desperately. I had understood, but not in the truest way of knowing that this, right here, was the beginning of sorrow. I began writing letters to my mother. I knew I was taking notes of the end. Bring us Home from Sorrowis an intimate portrait of losing a mother and the ways we are kept apart from those we love by distance, disease and death. It is also a celebration of the salvation of ocean swimming through bereavement and the slow return to a world forever changed by the loss.

A prisoner in a WWII concentration camp discovers a superpower that could keep him alive - he can make the commandant laugh by telling jokes. Pushed to ends of his wit and humanity, Gagman is propelled into a spiralling madness in which he would sell his soul for a gag simply to live another day. Evoking themes from The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Fedler weaves the story of a Faustian bargain brokered in hell, where redemption only comes in the form of a punchline. He must stay funny - or die. Enhanced by Fedler's own haunting illustrations, Gagman masterfully juxtaposes humour and pathos, while exploring themes of survivor guilt, desperate determination and the search for the meaning of life in the wake of the Holocaust. Swapping his yellow star for a tattered comic book, Gagman roams the new world and our consciousness determined to find answers to the deepest questions about loss, hope and belonging. Gagman is a touching and unique tale of survival through unimaginable horror. 'A compulsory addition to all Holocaust-related collections, Fedler's tour de force is a dazzling achievement.' - Scott Whitmont About the Authors Dov Fedler, one of South Africa's legendary political cartoonists (now retired), has been working on this story for 35 years. His earliest dream was to work for Walt Disney but he ended up working for The Star newspaper as their cartoonist in the early 1970's instead, and had a career that spanned half a century. Gagman is his fourth book. His previous titles include his memoir, Out of Line, Tracey McDonald Publishers, (2015), If You Can Write, You Can Draw, Joanne Fedler Media (2018) and Starlite Memories, Tafelberg (2020). Joanne Fedler is an internationally bestselling author of 14 books, speaker and publisher. She is Dov's writing mentor, editor and middle daughter. www.joannefedler.com

At 34, Faith has given up on love. Her cleavage is disappointing, her best friend is clinically depressed and her younger sister is getting breast implants as an engagement present. She used to think about falling in love, but that was a long time ago. Having heard one too many love-gone-wrong stories from the other side of her desk, Faith is worn thin by her work as a legal counsellor in a women's crisis centre. Then one night, an odd twist of fate brings her to a suburban veterinary clinic where she wrings out years of unshed tears. It is a night that will slowly change the way she sees herself and begin the unearthing of long-buried family secrets so she can forgive herself for something she doesn't remember, but that has shaped her into the woman she is today. Faith will finally understand what she has always needed to know: that before you can save others, you have to save yourself.

In an age of uncertainty, love is the only thing left to believe in. So why is it so hard? Through interlocking stories that are moving, funny and all too familiar, the authors combine their years of personal and professional experience to tackle the toughest questions around intimacy. This book will change the way you see yousrelf and and how you think about long-term love. Finding and keeping intimacy is a challenge, but it's not impossible when you lean into love.

Mia is in Bosnia as a journalist when she is summoned by Asher, the man she blames for her father's death. In his dying moments, Asher returns the dreamcloth to her, a patchwork of beads and lace he stole when she was just a child. The cloth, woven by a seamstress in a grim shtetl in Lithuania, holds the mystery of a forbidden love affair of Mia's grandmother Maya, as she fled the anti-Semitism of Europe in the 1920's. Mia returns to her homeland South Africa, on the eve of the first democratic elections where she grapples to make sense of the injustices, absences and hauntings of her childhood. What happened to her artist father Issey, her nanny Sarafina, and her best friend Grace? The dreamcloth with its 'glimmer of blue silk, a moon of filigree lace and woven cobblestones of amber, ' holds the answers to all that has been lost.Fedler weaves together the present, past and distant past in a stirring epic of family secrets handed down from generation to generation, and ghosts that will not let go of the living.

Love in the Time of Contempt is a gritty, hilarious look at the day-to-day interactions with teenagers and the tussled, frazzled and complex business of remaining mature while supporting someone to become an adult. Fedler shares her philosophy that we are meant to parent imperfectly - our mistakes are the start of the important conversations we need to have with our kids. She guides us through enduring intermittent bouts of contempt, while not taking it personally, picking the fights that are worth having, and surviving the journey from frustration, to confusion, to elation and back again.Love in the Time of Contempt is a funny, poignant account of the dramas and delights of parenting people who know it all, who don't yet have a fully functioning brain and who desperately need us to parent them - just not in the way we're used to.

You never know what can happen when a group of women reunite for a weekend away, leaving behind husbands, kids and chores...It's been ages since Jo, Helen, Ereka and CJ first became friends through their mothers' group - back then, life revolved around their small children. Now their kids are pre-teens and teenagers with attitudes and raging hormones, and life is feeling emptier for some mothers, more liberating for others. While away together in an old country house with a couple of new friends and plenty of wine and food, it's not long before the women are discussing men, marriage and parenting, sharing intimacies and confiding vulnerabilities. Friendships are put on the line as the bonds between them are tested and the weekend takes some unexpected turns. Picking up where the Secret Mothers' Business left off, The Reunion is an insightful, funny and often biting novel about the challenges women face as their bodies change, dreams fade and kids grow up. Ultimately it explores what it means to be a good friend, a good person and a good mother - and suggests that all love is about learning to let go.

What happens when a group of eight very different women get together for a sleepover with no husbands, no kids, a sumptuous feast and a lot of alcohol?Jo is about to find out.Secrets are revealed and loyalties tested as these women talk about everything from keeping up appearances to their most intimate fantasies and fears - and the seemingly impossible task of deciding just what to feed the family every single night of the damn week.Based on intimate conversations with real women, united only by their experience of motherhood, Secret Mothers' Business breaks the unwritten and unspoken code of perfect mothering to expose the raw truths of parenthood.No taboo is spared in this funny, thought-provoking celebration of the beauty and complexity of friendship, the ways that women support one another and the ways they can let each other down. Be warned, you may recognize yourself within these pages.

As you begin your writing journey, you discover there is more to it than simply putting words on the page. Writing is also a deeper encounter with the mysteries of the creative process and your life as a sentient, sensitive, spiritual being.It brings you to the brink of vast questions like: - Why am I writing and who is it for? - Who am I becoming as I write? - What vision of life is my writing in service to? - How do I find my way again when I get lost, afraid or overwhelmed?In this exquisitely illustrated book of meditations for aspiring writers and authors, internationally bestselling author and writing mentor Joanne Fedler shepherds you through nine portals of visualization to dissolve the resistances, uncertainties and doubts that all aspiring authors encounter.Based on her signature writing course, The Author Awakening Adventure, these meditations are a loving guide to anyone who longs to walk the writing path.