Celebrate this year’s 5 Over 50 with readings from the authors and a conversation about their individual paths to publication. This free virtual event took place on Thursday, November 6, at 7 PM EST.
Introducing this year’s 5 Over 50 (clockwise from top left): Princess Joy L. Perry, author of This Here Is Love (Norton); Vishwas R. Gaitonde, author of On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Orison Books); Yael Valencia Aldana, author of Black Mestiza (University Press of Kentucky); Lauren K. Watel, author of Book of Potions (Sarabande Books); and Jennifer Eli Bowen, author of The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There (Milkweed Editions). Read essays by the debut authors as well as excerpts from their books.
From the November/December 2025 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine: “For a decade we’ve devoted space in each November/December issue to celebrate debut authors over the age of fifty with first books published during the current calendar year. The writers in their fifties and sixties spotlit in this issue share their unique literary pathways, reflecting on how they took the leap to overcome their fears, their struggles to wake up with the rising sun and write before the days begin, how sharing the stories of their ancestors awakened their creativity, the importance of perseverance—even when ‘life has the rotten habit of interfering’—and the triumph of growing up and cultivating one’s calmness. As Princess Joy L. Perry notes, ‘It is only now that I realize I was a real writer all along. … I was a writer before a publishing company finally said yes to me. So are you.’”
Perry: Jennifer Natalie Fish; Gaitonde: Robert Filcsik via Headshots & Corporate Photography; Watel: Ashley Kauschinger; Bowen: Emily Baxter.