Books

Joan Price bills herself as the “senior sexpert,” a phrase that captures her late life career as an advocate for senior sexuality and the author of several non-fiction books on the subject. In Ageless Erotica, Price has collected well-written short stories about eroticism in later life, by both men and women. These stories cover a wide range of sexual orientation, gender identification, and realism alongside magic. All of the stories share a joy in the bodies we have now: Exploring them, rediscovering them, longing to share them.

This is one of the few books I am including that also has work by men. When you read it, pay attention to how the stories differ by gender – and how much they have in common. The notes about authors at the end of the book provide many ways to explore and connect with people who celebrate sexuality throughout our lives.

All We Know of Pleasure: Poetic Erotica by Women is a hugely satisfying collection edited by Enid Shomer and published by Carolina Wren Press.

It’s intriguing in part because the book is divided by the age of the poets and their subjects.
Part I, The Discovery of Sex, is all about first longing.
Part II, The Ordinary Day Begins, is about sex in the years of active motherhood.
Part III, When this Old Body, is of course my favorite and the part I read first.

“And suddenly, again, I want the long road of your thigh,” writes Jane Hirshfield of the desire that comes in long knowing.

“our bodies move and join / unbearably. / your face above me / is the face of all the gods / and beautiful demons,” writes Lenore Kandel, reminding us of the timelessness of lust.

“Neither of them was young. His beard was gray… But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning… We couldn’t look away,” writes Ellen Bass about a couple reunited at the Portland airport. These fine poems capture what it is to be a woman in love with life across its full span.

A spicy, satirical romp about a sixty-something woman who stumbles into a digital trap and comes out the other side owning her desire and her power. Billie Best skewers the culture’s assumptions about older women and sex, insisting with wit and nerve that a woman’s sensual life is far from over at 60.

This is an anthology of works performed at the (now sadly defunct) Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, California, at readings of erotica by women over fifty. The Dirty Old Women reading series pushes San Francisco Bay Area culture in the direction of celebrating sexuality after menopause. This volume is a varied collection from the readings, with stories, book excerpts, and poetry.

Full disclosure: My short story, “Terraforming,” is included in this collection. Many of the other stories were written by friends, so naturally I am fond of this volume for personal reasons as well as the fun read it undoubtedly is. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or if you travel there, check out the Dirty Old Women reading schedule (usually the 4th Tuesday of the month).

n this poignant tale, Jong interweaves the narrator’s sexual experience in her sixties with tales of her formerly glamorous parents as their health fails. As my own mother told me when she was in her nineties and I was in my sixties, “Enjoy your youth.”

Jong’s protagonist is determined to do just that. She works hard to reclaim the joys of her long-term marriage, and dances to the siren music of potential affairs. Ripe women have been dancing that tightrope for centuries without the benefit of literary models; Jong’s art makes visible what has been invisible. For those of us determined to prioritize our own erotic and creative lives, even while doing our best for aging parents and young adult children, this book holds up a mirror to the lives we are leading.

Our spiritual foremothers are the proper ladies of this California writing circle of the 1980s. The formal tone of these stories contrast beautifully with the tales of one-night stands, lovers who find each other after decades apart, and the bliss of married love as well. Just as in the Elderotica writing group that is still going strong in the Bay Area, the Ladies in this book use writing prompts to get their juices flowing, and they share some of their prompts here. As in my new book from North Atlantic Press, the Ladies’ Own Erotica encourages women of a certain age to come together in writing circles and share erotica and conversation.

Each of the women has a chance to tell her own story, and why she enjoyed the writing circle, in the “Kensington Ladies Revealed” chapter at the end of the book. There is something wonderful about coming together to write erotica, as these ladies discovered long ago.

Sarah Durham, a widowed theatre producer in her sixties, falls unexpectedly and humiliatingly in love, and has to reckon with desire in a body the world has stopped looking at. Lessing wrote it at seventy-seven and refuses every consolation the plot invites.

Heyman is a New York psychiatrist who published this collection of her stories when she was 74. Not surprisingly given her profession, Heyman is a student of the human spirit, and her stories are most notable for the depth of the characters she develops. Her people are sexual even in the face of illness and with the specter of death in the wings. If you have ever had the good fortune to live in New York City, these characters will come to you like people you almost met. This story collection was well received (for example, Terry Gross interviewed the writer on NPR), and has helped to bring erotic writing by older women into public consciousness.

The third collection from the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society — a group of women who have met in Berkeley for over twenty-five years to share the fantasies polite company won’t. Older now, and if anything bolder, they treat death as a mere distraction next to the twin appetites of mind and body. By turns racy and reflective, outrageous and open-hearted, these stories insist that desire doesn’t retire.

Southern women in a locked-down senior community reinvent their love lives in thirteen tales of friendly vampires, sexy demons, and dream lovers — plus eight bonus stories of vibrant women from New York to California.

The first of twelve linked romances set on an Australian island where nobody minds their own business. Celia Hart has kept her life orderly and entirely her own affair; Gavin Pike notices more than he says; the island notices everything. Late-life romance played for warmth and heat rather than wistfulness.

Unmasked: Women Write about Sex and Intimacy After Fifty

This book is part fiction, part essay, part poetry. The project was designed to help raise the level of visibility of the sexuality of women past fifty, and includes a wide variety of styles and approaches. The poems have some great lines to launch our thoughts into new creations.

I can’t do better than quote the authors “This collection of essays and poetry is meant to bring sex after fifty for women into the open, to proclaim that it is important, it is natural and healthy and, for some women, it is absolutely necessary. Unmasked will surprise, inform, and–it is hoped–encourage all women of a certain age to (re)discover their sexuality.”

Read this book to spark your thinking as well as your artistic side.

Shunned as a medieval healer and rescued by a vampire, Marion Chase joins a sisterhood devoted to ethical living. Five centuries later she runs a Chicago blood bank with a hidden sideline — until she falls for the one person who could destroy her.