Margo Coleman

"I never assisted my mother with her column; that was the Dear Abby group.". Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis have been reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables.¹. She attended Brandeis University, but dropped out to get married. . Margo was married to actor Ken Howard from 1977 to 1991. An author of fables is called a fabulist. Howard assisted her mother with writing the column for many years prior to Lederer's death, but it was decided ahead of her death that the column would not continue. The word fabulous strictly means "pertaining to fables", although in recent decades its metaphorical meanings have been taken to be literal meanings.

She is the daughter of Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, who wrote the Ann Landers column for many years. In some usage, "fable" has been extended to include stories with mythical or legendary elements. She previously wrote the "Dear Prudence" column for Slate Magazine. A familiar theme in Slavic fables is an encounter between a wily peasant and the Devil. Margo Coleman (often called "Margo Howard"; born Margo Lederer) is an advice columnist who writes for Yahoo! News. Medieval French fabliaux might feature Reynard the fox, a trickster figure, and offer a subtext that was mildly subversive of the feudal order of society. A fable often, but not necessarily, makes metaphorical use of an animal as its central character.

In its pejorative sense, a fable is a deliberately invented or falsified account. A fable may be set in verse, though it is usually prose. "Fable" comes from Latin fabula and shares a root with faber, "maker, artificer." Thus, though a fable may be conversational in tone, the understanding from the outset is that it is an invention, a fiction. In its strict sense a fable is a short story or folk tale embodying a moral, which may be expressed explicitly at the end as a maxim.

"Forrest Gump". Fables and Parables by Ignacy Krasicki. Emperor's New Clothes (fable). The Lion King.

Watership Down. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The Little Engine that Could. Stone Soup.

Sholem Aleichem. Damon Runyon. James Thurber (1894-1961), Fables For Our Time. George Ade.

"Uncle Remus" (Joel Chandler Harris). Ivan Krylov. Hans Christian Andersen. Ignacy Krasicki (Polish, 1735 – 1801).

Jean de La Fontaine. Biernat of Lublin (Polish, 1465? – after 1529). Marie de France. Berechiah ha-Nakdan (Berechiah the Punctuator, Jewish author, 1200s).

Hyginus, author of Fabulae. Phaedrus. Vishnu Sarma. Aesop.