Tamara Jorell lives in an inner-city neighborhood with lots of challenges. It’s a place where Homeless Dave is a fixture on the freeway exit ramp, where one learns soon enough the difference between the sounds of fireworks and gunshots, where goodness springs from a landscape speckled with police cars, and where visible needs show us life isn’t all about us. She writes about the neighborhood’s beauty and jagged edges—and many other topics too—in her blog. Through narrative nonfiction, she tells about finding security in an insecure world, how God’s fingerprints can mark a crime scene, what it’s like when He calls us to give away our homes, and why we choose to love both the prickly neighbors and the ones who love us back.
Jorell holds degrees in French, English, and Communication from the University of North Dakota. For years, she worked with adults with developmental disabilities and coordinated fundraising events for the Marcy Arts Partnership. Now she's a freelance grant writer, creative writer, model, and host mom for Safe Families for Children. Since 2012, she and her family have hosted twenty-five children in crisis. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband of twenty-seven years, their three daughters, and their beloved pit bull Lala.