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Magic City Poetry Festival presents: Old Enough:

Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging

A Magic City Poetry Festival presentation featuring poets and authors: Jeanie Thompson, Jacqueline Trimble, Laura Secord, Sanovia Muhammad, and Maria Vargas

Join writers, Jacqueline Trimble, Jeanie Thompson, Laura Secord, Sanovia Muhammad, and Maria Vargas, as they discuss poetry, creativity, and aging and their contributions to Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging.

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.

This book is a gift! It confronts clichéd 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

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