by Amy Newmark
Helen Wilder, a former kindergarten/first grade teacher in southeastern Kentucky, is married with one daughter, a son-in-law, and one grand puppy, Paco. Helen is passionate about teaching young children, storytelling, journaling, scrapbooking, reading, and writing inspirational articles.
Cynthia Zayn lives in the Atlanta area, and is the author of Narcissistic Lovers: How to Cope, Recover and Move On. She has taught in public and private schools throughout the United States and Mexico City, and now works as a freelance editor for community magazines as she pursues a full-time career as an author.
Karen Vincent Zizzo, MA, is an author and inspirational speaker whose passion is to inspire people to overcome obstacles in their lives. She generously shares very personal messages of faith, hope, love and the power of prayer through her Ask and You Shall Receive series of books, CDs and workbooks at karenzizzo.com.
Meet Our Authors
Amy Newmark was a writer, speaker, Wall Street analyst and business executive in the worlds of finance and telecommunications for more than thirty years. Today she is publisher, editor-in-chief and coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. By curating and editing inspirational true stories from ordinary people who have had extraordinary experiences, Amy has kept the twenty-one-year-old Chicken Soup for the Soul brand fresh and relevant, and still part of the social zeitgeist.
Amy graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University where she majored in Portuguese and minored in French. She wrote her thesis about popular, spoken-word poetry in Brazil, which involved traveling throughout Brazil and meeting with poets and writers to collect their stories. She is delighted to have come full circle in her writing career—from collecting poetry “from the people” in Brazil as a twenty-year-old to, three decades later, collecting stories and poems “from the people” for Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Amy has a national syndicated newspaper column and is a frequent radio and TV guest, passing along the real-life lessons and useful tips she has picked up from reading and editing thousands of Chicken Soup for the Soul stories.
She and her husband are the proud parents of four grown children and in her limited spare time, Amy enjoys visiting them, hiking, and reading books that she did not have to edit.
Natasha Stoynoff began her career as a teenaged entertainment sleuth in her hometown of Toronto, nabbing interviews and photos of elusive celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, Marlon Brando, and Madonna for the local dailies.
After earning a B. A. in English and Psychology at York University and studying Journalism, she worked as a two-way news reporter/photographer at the Toronto Star and created her own Showbiz column, “Celebrity Bytes,” at the Toronto Sun.
While still in Canada, Natasha became a correspondent for People and Time magazines, covering the Cannes International Film Festival and writing cover stories on sports, politics, and human interest. Before the turn of the century, she moved to New York City to join People on staff, where she remained for more than a decade interviewing top film and music icons including Meryl Streep, Paul McCartney, and Lauren Bacall.
Currently the author of ten books (with more in the works) including two New York Times bestsellers, Natasha lives in New York City where she is writing a screenplay that involves a lot of hope and a few good miracles.
Thank You
We owe huge thanks to all of our contributors. We know that you poured your hearts and souls into the thousands of stories that you shared with us, and ultimately with each other. As we read and edited these stories, we were truly amazed by your miraculous experiences and your stories of hope. We appreciate your willingness to share these inspiring and encouraging stories with our readers.
We could only publish a small percentage of the stories that were submitted, but we read every single one and even the ones that do not appear in the book had an influence on us and on the final manuscript. We owe special thanks to our editor Susan Heim, who read all the stories submitted for this book and helped us narrow the field down to the finalists. After we chose the 101 stories, managing editor Kristiana Pastir put together the initial manuscript and chose most of the inspirational quotations that start off each story. Our assistant publisher D’ette Corona worked with all the contributors to make sure they approved our edits, and she and senior editor Barbara LoMonaco performed their normal masterful proofreading job.
We also owe a very special thanks to our creative director and book producer, Brian Taylor at Pneuma Books, for his brilliant vision for our covers and interiors.
~Amy Newmark and Natasha Stoynoff
Sharing Happiness, Inspiration, and Wellness
Real people sharing real stories, every day, all over the world. In 2007, USA Today named Chicken Soup for the Soul one of the five most memorable books in the last quarter-century. With over 100 million books sold to date in the U.S. and Canada alone, more than 200 titles in print, and translations into more than forty languages, “chicken soup for the soul” is one of the world’s best-known phrases.
Today, twenty-two years after we first began sharing happiness, inspiration and wellness through our books, we continue to delight our readers with new titles, but have also evolved beyond the bookstore, with wholesome and balanced pet food, delicious nutritious comfort food, and a major motion picture in development. As a socially conscious company, we use the sales of our products to give back, supporting numerous non-profits in the U.S. and across the globe. Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, Chicken Soup for the Soul is “always there for you™.” Thanks for reading!
Share with Us
We all have had Chicken Soup for the Soul moments in our lives. If you would like to share your story or poem with millions of people around the world, go to chickensoup.com and click on “Submit Your Story.” You may be able to help another reader, and become a published author at the same time. Some of our past contributors have launched writing and speaking careers from the publication of their stories in our books!
We only accept story submissions via our website. They are no longer accepted via mail or fax.
To contact us regarding other matters, please send us an e-mail through [email protected], or fax or write us at:
Chicken Soup for the Soul
P.O. Box 700
Cos Cob, CT 06807-0700
Fax: 203-861-7194
One more note from your friends at Chicken Soup for the Soul: Occasionally, we receive an unsolicited book manuscript from one of our readers, and we would like to respectfully inform you that we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts and we must discard the ones that appear.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope & Miracles
101 Inspirational Stories of Faith, Answered Prayers & Divine Intervention
Amy Newmark, Natasha Stoynoff. Foreword by John Edward
Published by Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC www.chickensoup.com
Copyright © 2015 by Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
CSS, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and its Logo and Marks are trademarks of Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the many publishers and individuals who granted Chicken Soup for the Soul permission to reprint the cited material.
Front cover photo courtesy of iStockPhoto.com/Atropat (© Atropat).
Back cover and interior photo courtesy of iStockPhoto.com/dsteller (© dsteller).
Photo of Amy Newmark courtesy of Susan Morrow at SwickPix.
Cover and Interior Design & Layout by Brian Taylor
Distributed to the booktrade by Simon & Schuster. SAN: 200-2442
Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)
Chicken soup for the so
ul : hope & miracles : 101 inspirational stories of faith, answered prayers & divine intervention / [compiled by] Amy Newmark [and] Natasha Stoynoff ; foreword by John Edward.
pages ; cm
ISBN: 978-1-61159-944-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-61159-246-7 (eBook)
1. Faith--Literary collections. 2. Faith--Anecdotes. 3. Miracles--Literary collections. 4. Miracles--Anecdotes. 5. Prayer--Literary collections. 6. Prayer--Anecdotes. 7. Anecdotes. I. Newmark, Amy. II. Stoynoff, Natasha. III. Edward, John (John J.) IV. Title: Hope & miracles : 101 inspirational stories of faith, answered prayers & divine intervention V. Title: Hope and miracles
BL626.3 .C45 2015
204.2/02 2014956833