Jennifer McGaha

The Joy Document:
Creating a Midlife of Surprise and Delight

Once you begin looking for joy, you can find it pretty much anywhere.

When Jennifer McGaha’s grandmother was in her late eighties, Jennifer asked her what her favorite age so far had been. “Fifty-five,” her grandmother answered, as though there were something magical about this stage of life, some deeper way of knowing from this vantage point. So, in her own fifty-fifth year, Jennifer began to take note. She jotted down her impressions of simple, everyday things that struck her as beautiful or humorous or intriguing and kept a list of all the accomplishments, large and small, that actually mattered to her.

These observations became Jennifer’s Joy Document, a radical act of reclaiming joy and an exercise in paying attention.

Broadleaf Books (2024)

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“Gutsy, entertaining, and heartening, McGaha’s dispatches guide and inspire.”
– Publisher’s Weekly on Bushwhacking

Bushwhacking:

How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out

Part writing memoir, part nature memoir, and part meditation on a life well lived, Bushwhacking draws on McGaha’s experiences running, hiking, biking, paddling, and getting lost across the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina to offer readers encouragement and practical suggestions to accompany them on their writing and life journeys.

With humility, humor, and hard-won wisdom, Bushwhacking honors writing craft traditions and offers fresh insights into how close communion with nature can transform your writing and your life.

Trinity University Press (2023)

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