Writing Menopause by Jane Cawthorne

Writing Menopause by Jane Cawthorne

The Writing Menopause literary anthology is a diverse and robust collection about menopause: a highly charged and often undervalued transformation. It includes over fifty works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, interviews and cross-genre pieces from contributors across Canada and the United States that break new ground in portraying menopause in literature. The collection includes literary work from award-winning writers such as Roberta Rees, Margaret Macpherson, Lisa Couturier and Rona Altrows. Emerging voices such as Rea Tarvydas, Leanna McLennan, Steve Passey and Gemma Meharchand, and an original interview with trans educator and pioneering filmmaker Buck Angel, are also featured. This anthology fills a sizable gap, finding the ground between punchline and pathology, between saccharine inspiration and existential gloom. The authors neither celebrate nor demonize menopause. These are diverse depictions, sometimes lighthearted, but just as often dark and scary. Some voices embrace the prospect of change, others dread it.Together, this unique offering reflects the varied experience of menopause and shatters common stereotypes.

Jane Cawthorne's work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, on CBC and in academic journals. In 2011, she was a finalist for the Alberta Writers Guild, Howard O-Hagan Short Fiction Award for her story Weight. Her play, The Abortion Monologues, has been produced many times in the United States and Canada. Jane lives in Toronto and is completing an MFA in Creative Writing with the Solstice Program at Pine Manor College in Boston. E. D. (Elaine) Morin is a writer, editor, and creative writing instructor. Her fiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, and articles have appeared in such publications as The Antigonish Review, Alberta Views, The Wascana Review and Alternatives Journal, and her work has been produced for broadcast on CBC Radio. A winner of the Brenda Strathern Late Bloomers Writing Prize, awarded at 2007 Calgary International Wordfest, Elaine is a co-director of the annual Calgary reading series, Writing in the Works.