​2019 Keynote Speaker Bio

Our keynote speaker for 2019’s Family Matters Conference will be Anndee Hochman, pictured.

Her talk is entitled "The Stories That Shape Us; The Stories We Tell"
It’s not just our posture, or our opposable thumbs. Human beings differ from other species because we are storytelling animals. 

In an interactive keynote, Anndee Hochman, author of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s weekly “Parent Trip” column, will share highlights from her work as a  journalist and memoirist. She’ll invite conversation about the stories that shape us—what tales do we share? who does the telling? who is left out?—and how those stories, added up, are changing the world.
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Anndee Hochman is a journalist, essayist, teacher and storyteller; her column, "The Parent Trip," appears weekly in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her work has also appeared in Poets & Writers, GROW magazine, Broad Street Review and Purple Clover.

She is the author of Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press).

Anndee also teaches poetry, memoir and creative non-fiction to children, teens and adults.

She is a two-time story slam winner at The Moth, her newest platform for sharing indelible life experiences.

She and her partner are acclimating to a not-entirely-empty nest (housemates and cats still around!) as their 18-year-old daughter begins her first year of college.