7 March 2012

Harriet Doerr, author of the National Book Award winning novel Stones for Ibarra, published that beautiful novel – her first – at the age of 74 (she also went back to college to earn her BA at the age of 65).  She wrote, in a personal essay called “The Tiger in the Grass,” about speaking at a writers’ conference:

I explained my late start as an author after forty-two years of writing “housewife” on my income tax form.  These years without a profession, from 1930 to 1972, were also the years of my marriage.  Hands were raised after my talk, and I answered questions.  The final one was from a woman who assumed, incorrectly, these were decades of frustration.  “And were you happy for those forty-two years?” she asked, and I couldn’t believe the question.  I asked her to repeat it, and she said again…