Tara chats with a special guest, the prolific and award-winning Canadian author Merilyn Simonds regarding her latest book, Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-year-old Friend.

https://merilynsimonds.com/

"In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?

During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future.

In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women’s lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day."

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• The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, My Father, and Me by Emily Urquhart


• Code Noir: Fictions by Canisia Lubrin


• We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek