J.K. Rowling observed, “There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.” Perhaps that’s why writers constitute Later Bloomer’s largest category. Our books and stories can become healing gifts to ourselves and to the future.
William Gay was the son of a sharecropper. He grew up a blue-collar worker, barely making a living, writing at night. At age 55, after countless rejections, he got published.
Long before King Richard III was unearthed from a Leicester parking lot, Sharon Kay Penman sought to tell the truth of his life. She ook on propagandist William Shakespeare and acquitted herself more than admirably. But not before a dastardly deed was done…
The first Harry Potter book only had a 1000-copy run. J.K. Rowling spent a year hawking it while getting a teaching certificate. And then magic happened…
In which I revisit Chandler’s classic 1944 Atlantic Monthly essay on genre writing.
A late-blooming writer who published her first novel at 56, but didn’t see her second one in print until age 84!
For fifty years, Seidler wanted to tell the story of fellow stutterer King George VI. A cancer diagnosis finally motivated him to do it. He beat cancer and won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at age 74.