Meadow Rue Merrill is the author of The Backward Easter Egg Hunt and four additional children’s picture books celebrating the holidays at Lantern Hill Farm, the name of her inspirational children’s picture-book series with RoseKidz. Her memoir, Redeeming Ruth: Everything Life Takes, Love Restores (Hendrickson Publishers), won a 2018 Christopher Award for books that inspire and the 2018 Maine Literary Award for memoir. A former award-winning journalist, Merrill was a long-term correspondent for The Boston Globe and regularly contributed to The New York Times, The Boston Sunday Globe Magazine and Down East magazine, where she served as a contributing editor.
Merrill graduated from Gordon College with a degree in English and has participated in graduate-level writing workshops through the University of Southern Maine and the Highlights Foundation. She is also a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and teaches writing to students at Chop Point school in Woolwich, Maine. Her weekly blog Faith Notes runs as a column every Friday in The Times Record newspaper, of Brunswick, Maine, where she began her writing career more than two decades ago. And she is the director of The Art & Joy of Words, an inspirational writers’ gathering held each June in New Harbor, Maine.
Merrill writes for children and adults from a little house in the big woods of midcoast Maine, where she lives with her family, one rescue puppy and a flock of mischievous chickens. She enjoys pretending to be a farmer, long walks down the road to chat with the neighbor’s horses and sharing her love of books with groups of all ages.