Charlotte Meryman

Charlotte Meryman is a journalist, essayist, editor and photographer whose work reflects her many interests, including parenting, special needs, education, and science and nature. Over the past two decades, her articles have appeared in numerous publications, including FamilyFun, Wondertime, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Hartford Courant's Northeast magazine and Hampshire Life. Her photography has appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's former Sunshine magazine. She is a longtime contributing editor at FamilyFun. She served as a contributing editor at Wondertime from its launch in 2006 through 2007 and was the editor of Parenting from the Heart, a publication of Motherwear International, from 1998 until its close in 2006. She also is the editor, with Deanna Cook, of the FamilyFun My Great Idea book (Disney Editions, 2005).

In 1999, Meryman received the national Sunday Magazine Editors' Association First Place Features Award for the final installment of her three-year series, "The Race to Reach Elijah," published in Hampshire Life in 1996, '97 and '98. The second installment of that series, which follows the family of a young autistic boy, received an Honorable Mention from the same organization in 1998. Her work also has been recognized by the New England Associated Press News Executives Association, the New England Press Association, and the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.

The youngest of four children, Meryman was deeply influenced by the experience of growing up on a small farm with a brother who is developmentally delayed. After graduating from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she earned a B.A. in English, she spent a year as a counselor in a group home for adults with special needs before pursuing a career in journalism. She worked for many years as a reporter and editor at Transcript Newspapers in Dedham, Massachusetts, and as an editor at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts. Now a freelance writer, editor, and photographer, she lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and their two high school/​college-age children. She maintains a daily photoblog at Aminus3.com.