Ayana is a writer and new mom who just moved back to her hometown, Philly. She’s gearing up for a lot of celebrating in 2021 because her first book, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, turns 20 in February.
Desiree is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, essayist and award winning author of the flash fiction collection, Know the Mother. Her latest essay, “Arrest Record,” about her troubling conversation with her adult son, is now available on The Rumpus.
Age: 57 Bio: Karen is the author of the novel The Last Book Party, which was published in July by Henry Holt. She has been a tour guide in the former Soviet Union, a newspaper reporter in Florida, a magazine publisher in Russia and a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations Development Programme. She lives with her family near New York City and spends as much time as possible in Truro on Cape Cod. Beyond the Bio: “I’m the quintessential late bloomer, writing my first novel in my 50s. Our culture celebrates young success, but I’ve learned from experience that late-in-life achievements are all the sweeter. And publishing your first novel just as your youngest child goes to college is a great antidote to empty nest syndrome.” What makes you a grown-ass lady? “I’m much more likely to try new things and not worry about how well I do them or how foolish I might look. Only well after age 40 did I have the guts to learn to downhill ski, scuba dive, and …
(Photo Credit: Little, Brown and Company/Beowulf Sheehan) NAME: Donna Tartt AGE: 50 OCCUPATION: Author/Novelist WHO SHE IS: With just three novels published during her nearly three-decade career, Donna Tartt might be seen as an avatar for Slow Writing. Fortunately, each of those books has been worth the long wait. The Secret History (1992) was a huge bestseller; The Little Friend (2002) won two awards (the WH Smith Literary Award and the 2003 Orange Prize for Fiction), and The Goldfinch (2013) has garnered immense praise both critical and collegial (including a thumbs up from Stephen King!). Donna began writing at the University of Mississippi, where her talent came to the fore and she transferred to Bennington College in Vermont, studying alongside other literary lights like Jonathan Lethem and Brett Easton Ellis (with whom she was briefly romantically involved). She is retiring but not reclusive, and has told the New York Times that she “keeps distractions at a minimum,” using the Internet usually “to find a restaurant address.” It is, without a doubt, this kind of focus that makes Tartt’s brilliant fiction so incandescent that, …
