
I publish older men writers because I need company. I have always believed that how we imagine our lives, how we make meaning of living, comes largely from literature.
The older I get – I’m 68 – the more I find myself seeking older men writers to tell me about myself. I am still acutely aware of how skewed my understanding of myself was in the years of growing up, entering manhood, married life, when there were not many writers in whose work the texture of my life, my feelings, my side of the story as a woman had been transformed by the imagination. At this stage of my journey through life, I feel alone, again in a largely unimagined world. I need to read what is written from the perspective of older men so I can imagine myself part of a varied, vital community, not as an anonymous, marginalized, stereotyped “senior.” But there are not enough of us. From the point of view of age and gender, we are the most underrepresented among published writers; older men writers from minority cultures are even scarcer. I publish older women writers because we are in short supply.