Have you come to writing later in life, and worry that you might have missed the boat? Far from it! Novelist Christine Cohen Park explores the new interest from publishers in books written by women in their 70s and 80s
For us older writers – I’m 81 – an article by Amelia Hill in the Guardianin the early spring of this year claiming that this was a good time for women writers in their 70s or even 80s to be attempting to get published was encouraging news indeed!
Suddenly, apparently, it’s become sexy to be an older voice. ‘The distinct voice of the older woman is now seen as saleable’, commercial writer Anna Fordorova is quoted as saying. Aged 79, she’d found a receptive market for her first novel In The Bloodwhich went on to become a bestseller. Joanna Quin, Nikki May, Shelley Read, Jo Browning Wroe, Louise Kennedy were some of the other women Hill cited who’d recently found success in later life.
Cherry Potts, founder of Arachne Press explains: ‘There has been a sea change in publishers’ understanding and acceptance of older women’s experience and their voices.’ Lisa Highton, associate literary agent at Jenny Brown Associates, suggests, ‘it’s almost an advantage to be coming into publishing for the first time at a senior age with an amazing story. The vast majority of books are bought by women aged 45 and above… they want to see themselves represented in books.’
Yippee.
I had some critical success with my early novels, so I’m not a new writer, but I am one who, due to circumstances, disappeared from the publishing scene for over two decades, and now, after five years of intensive work, research trips, and many drafts, am about to put my head above the parapet with a pertinent and urgent novel set in the Middle East against the backdrop of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
My experiences as a reader, both personally and professionally, chime with the claims Hill makes. When I retired from teaching at University, I trained as a Shared Reading facilitator. One of the groups I run is entering its fifteenth year. The group is predominantly female and retired.
What do we want from our novels, and is it any different from what I myself want to engage me on trains, through sleepless nights and these winter days? We want to be absorbed, we want protagonists we care about, stories that open up new worlds, or give us fresh perspectives on familiar ones. Stories that makes us laugh, or cry, or both. Stories that make us think, reconsider. Stories that transport us out o
