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Rona Maynard once viewed online friendships as a threat to the time-honoured graces of real-world friendship (the dinner date, the hand-written note, the phone call just to say hello). That was before she learned to use the Internet to deepen old ties and make new ones possible. Read more in the summer 2008 issue of Best Health, the new magazine from Reader's Digest. [more]

For a couple of nerve-crunching months this past summer, I couldn't tear myself away from the fractious, foul-mouthed, flat-out dispiriting debate over U.S. health care. Watching the epithets fly from sober, well-mannered Canada, where we think of health care as a citizen's right and would no sooner pack a gun at a public meeting than abandon our firstborn child in the woods, I sometimes felt like a rubbernecker at the scene of a brutal car crash. [more]

Is there a woman on your Christmas gift list who already has plenty of sweaters but can't resist a book to sink into? I have just the book for the occasion--my memoir, My Mother's Daughter, which Alice Munro called "wonderfully honest and enthralling." Buy your personally inscribed copy directly from me at a special price including postage. [more]

In "If looks could thrill," 50-something Rona Maynard finds a new beauty role model: a confident, stylish, unBotoxed woman who just happens to be over 60. [more]

I remember when we hardly said a word about mental illness in the workplace. The business community lost talent, time and money because no one dared to face the truth. So when the Women's Executive Network asked me to be the Patron Host of a May 4 luncheon in Toronto that will highlight the business case for grappling with mental illness, I was quick to say, "Count me in." [more]

I'm celebrating International Women's Day with a keynote speech for Nova Vita Domestic Violence Prevention Services---and I'd love to have you join me for a night of inspiration. I'll be sharing stories that illustrate one of my favourite themes: the resilience of women. [more]

You can tell a lot about a book from the first sentence. Here's the latest one that hooked me: "It was just the two of us, my mother and me, after my father left." I knew I was about to read an honest-to-goodness story with characters on the brink of change they never dared imagine and a plot to keep me wondering, "What will happen next?" These old-fashioned pleasures, often shunted aside by fashionably minimalist fiction, are front and centre in my sister Joyce Maynard's new novel Labor Day. [more]

Is gray hair an old-ladyish career killer or the sign of a modern woman who's not afraid to be herself? Shelagh Rogers will pose the question to Rona (who's been happily gray for eight years), journalist Mary Wiens and career expert Barbara Moses. Tune in to Sounds Like Canada on Monday, January 25, at 11 a.m. in all time zones. Here's to a lively and eye-opening discussion. [more]

Let's say you're a woman with a thriving business---or an entrepreneurial dream you're determind to pursue. You're also the mother of a daughter with skills to share and a career to build. Can you bring her on board and still like each other in the end? More, Canada's magazine for women over 40, asked me to find out. [more]

How do you comb your own life for a story that will resonate with readers? What's the burning question every reader asks about memoir? And this authorial mystery known as a voice: how do you connect with yours? Rona Maynard, memoirist and former Editor of Chatelaine, covers all the essentials in an intimate, one-day workshop that suits all levels. [more]

Rona Maynard's book about her relationship with her mother reveals the impossible expectations we all place on our own mum [more]

Globe and Mail reviewer Elizabeth Grove-White concludes, "Maynard's memoir taps into the witches' brew of clear-eyed candour and emotional ambivalence that colours many of our mother/daughter relationships." [more]