Chapters About: Autumn Voices

Autumn Voices, price ₤12.99, is published by PlaySpace Publications,2018. Between 2015 and 2017 Robin Lloyd-Jones interviewed nineteen Scottish writers over the age of 70 (and himself): Sheena Blackhall, Larry Butler, Jenni Calder, A,C,Clarke, Stewart Conn, Douglas Dunn, Sally Evans, Vicki Feaver, Lee Gershuny, Alasdair Gray, Diana Hendry, Richard Holloway, James Kelman. Carl MacDougall, Bernard MacLaverty, Robin Lloyd-Jones, Alison Prince, Pauline Prior-Pitt, John Purser, Sheila Templeton. The twenty established writers who speak to us through Autumn Voices represent a total of over one hundred and fifty years of varied, fascinating and colourful life experience since passing the age of seventy. All of them show that productivity and creativity can be extended well into later life and provide role models for future generations. These are men and women who see old age as life’s last great adventure and who have chosen to embrace it, to regard it as a new and interesting phase of life, full of possibilities while also accepting the losses age brings with honesty, courage and even humour. Through their lives and their writing they demonstrate qualities, values and attitudes which contribute to successful ageing and continuing creativity. These mature autumn voices speak to us from a point where experience is at its maximum, perspective at its broadest and mastery of craft at its peak. We have much to learn from them.