Who is Meg Cox?
Ohio native Meg Cox has been earning her living as a writer since graduating from Northwestern University in 1975. She was hired as a staff writer by the Wall Street Journal in 1977, at age 24, and worked at the WSJ in Chicago and New York for 17 years.
While at the Journal, Meg contributed hundreds of front-page stories and was lauded for her feature writing. Her beats included financial futures, agriculture, the business of the arts, and publishing.
Since the birth of her son, Max, in 1994, Meg has written for many national magazines, lectured and taught all over the country and authored five books. She continues to contribute weekend arts features to the Wall Street Journal.
Her two main specialties are FAMILY TRADITIONS and QUILTING, two wildly misunderstood topics. Both are thought to be old-fashioned and un-hip which could not be farther from the truth. Today’s smart parents are avid inventors of personalized rituals and celebrations that give their kids a sense of identity, security , meaning and fun. These traditions encompass everything from meals and activities handed down through generations, to brand new rituals, including some built around cutting-edge tech devices like iPads and smart phones. The same is true of quilting: the 21 million American quilters who have built this burgeoning craft into a $3.6 billion industry are educated, computer-literate and fiercely creative. Did you know the dominant version of quilt-design software is in version 7?
Meg Cox’s writing and lecturing on FAMILY TRADITIONS is informed by her experience as a mother, stepmother and step-grandmother, as well as more than a decade of interviewing psychologists, religious leaders and hundreds of families about rituals. Meg has been hired as a traditions spokesperson by such companies as Pillsbury, KFC and Hallmark.
Her expertise on QUILTING stems partly from the 25 years that she has been a passionate quilter. Additionally, Meg served on the board of the national nonprofit Quilt Alliance for 10 years and was president for 6 years. She writes a popular free monthly e-newsletter called Quilt Journalist Tells All. See her commentary on modern quilting in the hit 2011 documentary, Stitched.
