Celestial Sirens

3 extraordinary women

As we move into winter and honor the arrival of extended light here in the Northern Hemisphere, I want to acknowledge a few women I’ve been fortunate enough to work with over the last year or so. Three in particular, because they have so much in common.

1.   They are all over 60

2.   They rhyme (I mean, their names do)

3.   They live (mostly) in Portland, but travel extensively

4.   They are happily unpartnered

Two of the women launched debut novels, and the third is a veteran author, but what I found most enchanting when working with these powerhouses has less to do with age than ferocity. Or, as my friend Lidia (who, years ago, gifted me the mermaid talisman in the above photo) terms it, “making art in the face of fuck.”

Suzanne Parry, whose historical novel (book one of a series!), LOST SOULS OF LENINGRAD hit the shelves late last year, wrote much of her novel while dodging COVID, flying coast-to-coast to help one of her children with childcare.

Here’s a quick summary of the novel:

Equal parts war epic, family saga, and love story, Lost Souls of Leningrad brings to vivid life this little-known chapter of World War II in a tale of two remarkable women—grandmother and granddaughter—separated by years and experience but of one heart in their devotion and determination. 

After earning a Master’s in International Affairs at Princeton (armed with an undergrad concentration in Russian studies), Suzanne spent much of her career working for the Department of Defense, where she helped negotiate the Conference on Disarmament in Europe, the first security agreement of the Gorbachev era. She also raised her four children, ran marathons, and worked as a high school cross country coach. Her passion and energy come through on the page, and even if you’ve never picked up a historical novel, you’ll find Lost Souls to be a riveting page-turner.

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At 80+, Dian Greenwood is one of my most senior clients, and I count her as a good friend. Her debut novel, ABOUT THE CARLETON SISTERS, launched this past summer to critical acclaim, and is currently on the shortlist of the Somerset Book Awards. The novel is the product of decades of drafts, and I was so lucky to have been part of Dian’s editorial team and witness the birth of this enchanting book. Here’s the premise:

Three daughters, three extraordinarily different lives are called into obligatory reunion in the family home as prelude to the mother’s impending death. 

Dian is a practicing family therapist, and brings her sensitivity and experience with complicated family dynamics to her writing. Look for her next book, FOREVER BLACKBIRDS, in May of the coming year.

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Jan Baross splits her time between Portland, Oregon and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. That in and of itself is a pretty special kind of life, right? A veteran filmmaker, playwright and visual artist, novel writing is only one of eighty-year-old Jan’s passions. Jan hired me to do a developmental edit of her autofiction book, BYE-BYE BAKERSFIELD, and it was hard to put on the editor’s cap because I was laughing so hard during my initial readthrough. Seriously, you guys, this novel is a hoot and a half.

Check out the description:

Bakersfield, California in the 1950’s was redneck central. With humor and tenacity, a young Jewish girl negotiates the pitfalls of growing up as an outsider in a very strange land.

That word in the description up there? Tenacity? It’s another thing these authors have in common. You may have heard that women of a certain age are largely invisible in the normative scheme of things? Well, fuck that. We have lived through some shit, amirite? And we’re now learning how to TikTok and self-promote, and stand firmly in a world that is growing increasingly more impatient and fractured by the year. Jan, Dian and Suzanne are defying the odds, and are proof that it’s never too late. Never.