In 2018, poet and writer Priscilla Long gave a talk at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Co. celebrating the second edition of The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). She used her platform to discuss creativity and aging. “I think it’s time to talk about this, partly because I turned 75 this year,” she said at the lectern, and the audience erupted into cheers and applause.
Now, Long has written Dancing with the Muse in Old Age (Coffeetown Press, 2022) – an anti-ageist manifesto that debunks the myth of peak creativity from ages 39-42 with inspirational anecdotes about writers, artists, scholars, and athletes who work long into their 90s…and beyond.
“I’m going to be 80 next year, and that’s pretty shocking, and the reason it shocks me is I grew up in the same ageist culture that we all do,” she explains. “I thought I wouldn’t live past age 30. I’m a pretty contented person, but it was time to actually pay attention to the research around aging – which tells us, among other things, that old people tend to be happy – in contrast to what we might think.”
I caught up with Long via a Zoom conversation in late September. At 52, I’ve been guilty of deflecting when someone asks how old I am. But listening to her wisdom on the importance of openly embracing our
