20 DEBUT WORKS OF FICTION BY WOMEN OVER 40
It’s not unusual to come across lists of young writers, particularly young women writers. While these lists showcase young people’s achievements, where are the opportunities for older people, particularly older women who may have had to postpone undertaking a writing career while focusing on the more traditional expectations for women: caring for a home and children?
But, according to Jenny Bhatt:
there are also many successful examples to serve as role models and provide ongoing inspiration for older writers—or aspiring writers of any age.
Below is a list of women writers who debuted works of fiction at or after the age of 40 and went on to achieve even more success. While not exhaustive, it shows clearly that women writers are not past their prime after a certain age. In fact, many are not even “late-bloomers”—they have simply deferred publishing due to family or career commitments. But the most striking aspect that unites all of these works is how each incorporates the collected, distilled wisdom, a lifetime of reading, and the sheer radicalism that could not have been possible for a younger writer.
Enjoy Bhatt’s list, which includes the following authors:
- Penelope Fitzgerald, age 60
- Mary Wesley, 71
- Harriet Doerr, 74
How To Stay Together For 50 Years
This week on Refinery29, we’re filling your screens and consciousness with inspiring women over 50. Why? Because living in a culture obsessed with youth is exhausting for everyone. Ageing is a privilege, not something to dread.
In this article Amelia Abraham writes, “When I think about all the relationships I’ve had that fizzled out around the one-year mark, I wonder whether I could even go the distance of five years, let alone 50.” She meets with three couples to discover their secrets for staying together for 50 years. Meet these couples:
- Jill and Michael, married for 57 years
- Ron and Ellen, married for 63 years
- Isabell and Ronnie, married for 57 years
Their secrets for achieving a long marriage include hard work, forgiveness, keeping romance alive, never walking away from an argument, and making a decision and sticking with it.
THE CHEERFUL SINNERS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST’S WILDEST PORT CITY
In case you missed this tidbit about me, we retired to Tacoma, WA, from St. Louis about five years ago. We love the Pacific Northwest, and one of our favorite activities is exploring new areas. We’ve visited Port Townsend, WA, several times and knew that it has a salty nautical heritage, so this article caught my eye.
Enjoy reading about the colorful history of Port Townsend, including its part in creating the phrase “to get Shanghaied.”
How to Take Charge of Your Medical Care
My mother was of a generation that thought of doctors as gods. She trusted doctors completely and did whatever they told her to do. When I once asked her what medications she was taking and what they were for, she had no idea.
But most people today take a more active approach to their health care (I hope). This article provides good advice for doing just that.
The best time to start taking charge of your medical care is when you’re not facing an emergency, and the article begins with a section on what to do when you’re healthy. It continues with sections about seeing a medical professional, being admitted to a hospital, returning home after hospitalization, and advocating for others.
Why Doctors Hate Their Computers
Digitization promises to make medical care easier and more efficient; instead, doctors feel trapped behind their screens.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon and public-health researcher, reports on a seeming contradiction:
Something’s gone terribly wrong. Doctors are among the most technology-avid people in society; computerization has simplified tasks in many industries. Yet somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.
Gawande uses his own experience with learning a new computer software program for medical records as a springboard to address the issue of how computerization affects the way people interact with each other. He writes:
Medicine is a complex adaptive system: it is made up of many interconnected, multilayered parts, and it is meant to evolve with time and changing conditions. Software is not. It is complex, but it does not adapt. That is the heart of the problem for its users, us humans.
This is a long article, but it treats in depth the question of how humans interact with each other as well as with technology.
© 2018 by Mary Daniels Brown
Retreading for Retirement 