Old Enough
Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging
Published on 1. May 2024
Book
Hardback
200 pages
978-1-58838-518-5 (ISBN)
Description
In Old Enough, twenty-one women artists and writers write about the experience of aging. Gay, straight, unmarried, partnered, widowed, Black, white, Latinx, retired, and working, these women are not squeamish about the challenges of growing older, including ageism, health concerns, and loss. And they are frank about how received notions of female aging can be restrictive and diminishing. But in lyrical, sometimes wry, often inspiring essays they explore what growing older can offer: self-knowledge, insight, and acceptance. Striking portraits by award-winning photographer Carolyn Sherer, who is also a contributor to the volume, accompany each essay.
At the heart of this invigorating collection is the bold championing of creative practice. Some contributors look back to their girlhood to recall their first powerful connections to art, while others show how they have refreshed their commitment to maintaining a practice. However, all are still driven to create and to investigate, to stay committed to the processes that work while finding new ways to stay creatively alive. Old Enough aims to honor the limitless variety, depth, and scope of being "old enough" and will resonate with readers who want to understand and find purpose, meaning, and comradery in their creative journey.
At the heart of this invigorating collection is the bold championing of creative practice. Some contributors look back to their girlhood to recall their first powerful connections to art, while others show how they have refreshed their commitment to maintaining a practice. However, all are still driven to create and to investigate, to stay committed to the processes that work while finding new ways to stay creatively alive. Old Enough aims to honor the limitless variety, depth, and scope of being "old enough" and will resonate with readers who want to understand and find purpose, meaning, and comradery in their creative journey.
Reviews / Votes
This beautiful collection of essays captures the process of aging from multiple points of view. Its wise writers can help us all navigate aging with courage, wisdom, and joy. -- Mary Pipher * author of A Life in Light * The spark may start early, but the real fireworks in late-life artists explode with the focus of age. Couldn't they have done it earlier? If this or that had happened in their lives, couldn't they have made their art when young? The answer is a resounding 'No.' Experience leads to experiment. 'What-others-want-me-to-do' fades in the glow of the finally acknowledged inner drive that fosters the brilliance of at last being splendidly Old Enough. -- Molly Peacock * author of The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72 * Old Enough is an extraordinary collection of observations, musings, and hard-earned insights about creativity and aging from an equally extraordinary group of diverse, bold, and brilliant women writers and artists-women who once blazed their own trail and now pause to reflect on the journey. Carolyn Sherer's stunningly beautiful photographs of the contributors, which accompany each piece, are not only a delightful surprise but also a creative touch which adds an intimacy and truth to the individual stories. This is a book to cherish, to hold close and contemplate, then to recommend to others: this one is a must-read. Whether their own journey is just beginning or in progress, they will thank you for it. -- Cassandra King * award-winning author of Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy * This book is a gift! It confronts cliched thinking about 'women of a certain age' with grace, humor, and candor. The idea that our creative pursuits can continue to nurture the best in ourselves and others, especially as we age, is inspirational. As a working journalist, mother, wife, and daughter (and Southerner) who has just rounded sixty, I want to thank these remarkable women for sharing their beautiful stories and encouraging us to embrace the now, and beyond. -- Debbie Elliott, national correspondent, NPR News In Old Enough, twenty-one creative women 'of a certain age'-writers, painters, sculptors, a quilter, a photographer, and a singer-songwriter, ages 57-87-share their stories about aging, illness, caretaking, and loss, and permission to carry 'play' from their childhoods into their adult and older lives. There are amazing essays here, about following your obsessions but keeping your balance, and about redefining, redoing, and finding purpose beyond the roles and structures we've used to keep ourselves safe. It's all here, y'all-wisdom captured in prose that flows like honey while cutting through tough topics with literary candor. -- Susan Cushman * editor of A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be and Southern Writers on Writing * A work of art to be enjoyed and learned from in parts or as a whole. We listen eagerly to a familiar piece of music. We revisit a favorite painting. We search our shelves for the book that holds a particular passage. This is the manner in which I plan to look again and again into Old Enough, seeking joy and nuance revealed afresh. -- Pearl McHaney * Arts ATL /Atlanta Journal-Constitution * If I had to come up with one word to describe these essays, it would be life-affirming, or maybe age-affirming or art-affirming. All the affirmings. I felt validated and inspired by the voices of other like-minded women artists who write about the call to create, about how they conceive of and create their art, about finding time to pursue art while also parenting and caregiving, adapting to aging, and facing illness. -- Amy R. Martin * Southern Review of Books * This striking collection invites each reader to consider age as something shaped by time, place, experience and our relationships. . . . the portraits and art create a scrapbook effect, inviting readers to start at whichever page is beckoning, and to thumb through to truly study Carolyn Sherer's rich photographic portraits or the art submitted by the artists themselves. -- Catherine Bowers * Georgia Library Quarterly *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
University of Georgia Press
Product notice
With dust jacket
Illustrations
20 color and 5 b&w images
Dimensions
Height: 272 mm
Width: 188 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
748 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-58838-518-5 (9781588385185)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
JAY LAMAR worked in arts and humanities outreach at Auburn University, where she was the founding director of the Alabama Center for the Book, before becoming executive director of the Alabama Bicentennial Commission. She has been a writer and editor for almost thirty years and is coeditor of The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Writers. She lives in Auburn, Alabama.
JENNIFER HORNE served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama, 2017-2021. She is the author of three collections of poems, a short story collection, and a biography, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, and has edited or coedited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories related to the South. Horne has taught creative writing in a variety of settings and has been recognized for her work by the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama State Poetry Society, and the Tuscaloosa Arts Council, among others. She lives in Cottondale, Alabama.
CAROLYN SHERER is an American photographer interested in issues of identity. She works in series, making individual images to create a composite portrait of often-marginalized communities. Her past work has featured people with disabilities, people living with HIV, and multiple projects related to the LGBTQ community. She lives in Homewood, Alabama.
KATIE LAMAR JACKSON is a freelance writer and photographer with four decades of experience working as a journalist, author, editor, and educator. Her work has been published in myriad newspapers, magazines, and essay collections and covers a diverse array of topics-gardening, wildlife, the environment, arts and culture, history, biography, and travel among them. She has authored or coauthored eight nonfiction books. After more than twenty-five years at Auburn University, she retired as communications director for Auburn's agricultural and natural resource programs. She currently lives in Opelika, Alabama, where she is working on a variety of creative nonfiction projects.
Emmy-winning writer and producer WENDY REED's work includes regional documentaries and the TV series Bookmark and Discovering Alabama. Her books include An Accidental Memoir: How I Killed Someone and Other Stories and All Out of Faith and Circling Faith. She has taught in Honors Colleges and is passionate about compelling science-writing, critical thinking, combatting disinformation, and books. Various Universities and the Alabama State Council on the Arts have awarded her writing fellowships. Currently she is a director at UAB's Alabama BRAIN Lab.
JENNIFER HORNE served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama, 2017-2021. She is the author of three collections of poems, a short story collection, and a biography, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, and has edited or coedited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories related to the South. Horne has taught creative writing in a variety of settings and has been recognized for her work by the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama State Poetry Society, and the Tuscaloosa Arts Council, among others. She lives in Cottondale, Alabama.
CAROLYN SHERER is an American photographer interested in issues of identity. She works in series, making individual images to create a composite portrait of often-marginalized communities. Her past work has featured people with disabilities, people living with HIV, and multiple projects related to the LGBTQ community. She lives in Homewood, Alabama.
KATIE LAMAR JACKSON is a freelance writer and photographer with four decades of experience working as a journalist, author, editor, and educator. Her work has been published in myriad newspapers, magazines, and essay collections and covers a diverse array of topics-gardening, wildlife, the environment, arts and culture, history, biography, and travel among them. She has authored or coauthored eight nonfiction books. After more than twenty-five years at Auburn University, she retired as communications director for Auburn's agricultural and natural resource programs. She currently lives in Opelika, Alabama, where she is working on a variety of creative nonfiction projects.
Emmy-winning writer and producer WENDY REED's work includes regional documentaries and the TV series Bookmark and Discovering Alabama. Her books include An Accidental Memoir: How I Killed Someone and Other Stories and All Out of Faith and Circling Faith. She has taught in Honors Colleges and is passionate about compelling science-writing, critical thinking, combatting disinformation, and books. Various Universities and the Alabama State Council on the Arts have awarded her writing fellowships. Currently she is a director at UAB's Alabama BRAIN Lab.