Dora van der Meiden-Coolsma

Dora van der Meiden-Coolsma
House where the Van der Meiden family lived in Drimmelen
Born	Theodora Hermina Coolsma 7 November 1918 Groningen, Netherlands
Died	2001 Breda, Netherlands
Pen name	Constance Hazelager
Occupation	author
Period	1936–1980
Genre	children's literature community correspondence

Theodora Hermina "Dora" van der Meiden-Coolsma (7 November 1918 – 19 June 2001) was a Dutch columnist and the author of children's fiction. She wrote 25 children's books. Seven of these were written together with Coos Covens. Two others were written under the pen name Constance Hazelager, under which she also wrote columns.^[1]

As the daughter, wife, and sister of Dutch Reformed ministers, and the granddaughter of the missionary Sierk Coolsma,^[2][3] most of her fiction was on Christian topics. Some books were set in Suriname where she had lived from 195 to 1955. From Suriname, she wrote columns for the daily newspapers Nieuwsblad van het Noorden and the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. Later, she wrote a series of articles for the Dutch women's magazine De Vrouw en haar Huis [nl].

Dora Coolsma married ds. Jan van der Meiden on 1 July 1940.^[4] At the height of his career, he was the minister of the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht. Subsequently, the Van der Meidens lived in Boekelo and Breda.^[4] They had four children, among whom the historian and translator Pim van der Meiden [nl] (1941–2017).^[2]