Nonfiction Fiction
Sixty and just getting started.
At last, there’s time for me.
Intrigued by how society is determined to see women—if we are seen at all—over the age of sixty as elderly and less competent, I interviewed many women, trying to learn how each navigated the decade.
The result is a heart-warming collection of essays, Sixty and Speaking Up, about what it means to be a woman in her sixties today. Women wrote from the USA, Canada, and the UK, describing their lives, their thoughts and feelings. Many of the stories are relatable; some will resonate more than others, but the writers’ bravery in speaking up cannot be denied. Learn more
“I loved this book! Approaching my 63rd birthday this month, I am so glad I picked it to read. These women all have emotions that exist in me. If you've ever considered the legacy you may leave behind or how you will be remembered, you'll read about how several women handled it. I liked the idea of creating your own ending and looking back without wondering about the what-ifs. If you're over 60 or approaching it, you must read this book!
Seventy is a new beginning.
One life to live.
Women in their seventies wrote, “What about me? I have something to say.” Another anthology, Seventy and Speaking Up, soon followed. Is there a difference between women in their sixties and seventies? You can decide, but with less, not more, time, women are shaping their lives in ways their grandmothers and mothers would not recognize, happy to be alive in this transformative decade. Read more here.
“Contemporary culture frequently treats women beyond midlife as either invisible, ornamental, dependent, or improbably heroic. This book refuses those constricting archetypes. Instead, it presents women who are contradictory, discerning, wounded, humorous, resilient, uncertain, intellectually alive, and still in motion. The collection does not ask readers to admire age abstractly. It asks them to listen to particular women as they narrate the consequences of choices, losses, recoveries, marriages, separations, illnesses, careers, friendships, and hopes that have accumulated into a complex present tense.
One of the collection's most compelling qualities is its resistance to a single thesis about aging. The women represented here do not appear to agree on one definitive meaning of their seventies, and that divergence is precisely the point.
Some writers look backward in order to understand the architecture of the self, while others look forward with practical curiosity. The anthology gains authority because it permits plurality rather than arranging experience into a consoling sequence of problem and resolution.”
Sixty and Speaking Up
Available in paperback or ebook, and soon to be an audiobook; buy here.
For reader reviews, click here.
Seventy and Speaking Up
Available in paperback or ebook, and soon to be an audiobook; buy here.
For reader reviews, click here.
“Claim your value now. You matter now, not later, not in a future that you cannot see.”