Anne Elliott talks to Bloom about transitions: from financial analyst to fiction writer, from New York to Maine, from wanting the writing life to living it. Leah De Forest: You’ve been writing a long time. Can we go back and talk about what your life was like, say, twenty or thirty years ago? Anne Elliott: … Continue reading
Category Archives: Features
BEST OF BLOOM: Sari Botton on Oldster, Aging, and Crooked Career Paths
Periodically, we revisit some of the “best of” Bloom from previous years. Bloom published this Q&A with Sari Botton on February 15, 2022, four months before we featured an excerpt of Botton’s memoir And You May Find Yourself … Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. Lisa Peet caught up with Botton to talk about—as Botton describes … Continue reading
The art of doing your own thing
“There’s a moment where artists start doing what they do. A good example is Rothko: his early work doesn’t look like Rothko. But then all of a sudden everything looks like a Rothko. I feel like that’s probably true of a lot of writers … at some point maybe you settle into the kind of … Continue reading
Dancing with the Muse in Old Age: A Profile of Priscilla Long
by Alice Lowe
At 79, she proudly claims and defends the word “old.” Further, there are no such things as “senior moments”; we all, at any age, forget where we left our keys or glasses now and then. Continue reading
Q&A with Hilma Wolitzer
by Lisa Peet
“I never think in terms of topics, and I never think in terms of readers. What happens is that, at the risk of sounding like Joan of Arc, I hear a voice in my head that just says the first sentence of the story.” Continue reading
An Excerpt from Joyce Becker Lee’s debut story collection, Casualties
“…Whether you’re a young reader searching for a way forward or an older reader reckoning with a past self who won’t leave you alone, you’re likely to find unexpected insights in Joyce Becker Lee’s emotionally complex and superbly crafted collection.” Continue reading
Q&A with Kimberly Olson Fakih on Little Miseries and Little Graces
by Lisa Peet
“I’m not comforted by happy endings. I’m deeply comforted by always being in the middle of a story. I tell myself, this is the middle, and I hang on to that—I don’t know the ending and I’ve got to see this through.” Continue reading