Celebrate this year’s 5 Over 50 with readings from the authors and a conversation about their individual paths to publication at a free virtual event on Thursday, November 6, at 7 PM EST.
Register for this free event!
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); Jennifer Eli Bowen, author of The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There (Milkweed Editions); and Lauren K. Watel, author of Book of Potions (Sarabande Books). Read essays by the debut authors as well as excerpts from their books.
From the current 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; Bowen: Emily Baxter; Watel: Ashley Kauschinger