Donna VanLiere

Donna is... ..a mom, a wife, an animal lover, and a closet comedian at home. She's passionate about cooking (...and eating), reading, movies and teaching, inspiring, challenging and encouraging dreamers! She doesn't like watching sports on TV but is a huge fan of athletes under five feet tall who call her Mom. Donna also loves to write books. As a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, her 13 titles include The Christmas Shoes and The Christmas Blessing - both of which were adapted into movies starring Rob Lowe, Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Neil Patrick Harris. Both movies garnered stellar ratings for CBS. The Christmas Hope starring Madeline Stowe was adapted by Lifetime Television. Donna's non-seasonal novel's, The Good Dream, Angels of Morgan Hill and non-fiction works like Finding Grace and High Calling - the biography of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband - capture the same warmth and poignancy as her Christmas books. Donna has won a Retailer's Choice Award for Fiction, a Dove Award, a Silver Angel Award, two Audie Awards for best inspirational fiction, has been a nominee for a Gold Medallion Book of the Year and is an inductee in the Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges Hall of Excellence joining such luminaries as Coretta Scott King, Hugh Downs, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Senator John Glenn. She also serves on the board of directors for National House of Hope, a residency program that is offered in several states for abused and at-risk teens. (By the way, if you're looking for a place to give or to serve, look no further than here www.NationalHouseofHope.org) Donna's mini-van is staring down 200,000 miles as she runs her kids to school, softball and baseball practices, Tae Kwon Do, church, and the grocery store all while promising her editor to meet her book deadlines (...which occasionally does happen). She loves to spend her summers with her family around the swimming pool or doing lots of camping. One of Donna's great loves is teaching and speaking. She has appeared at countless events around the country including keynote addresses at the prestigious Patricia Adams Lecture Series at Heidelberg University, Women of Faith, Among Friends Conferences and Extraordinary Women. Her latest book, The Christmas Light will be in stores October 2014 and her fourth movie, The Christmas Secret (starring Bethany Joy Lenz of One Tree Hill and Dexter) is currently in production and will air on the Hallmark Channel in late fall/early winter 2014.