An Opportunity For New Writers Of Speculative Fiction Who Are Of A Certain Age. Also, An Ageist Image Issue.

For twenty years, the Speculative Literature Foundation has been offering a $1,000 grant to writers who are at least 50 years old and are "just starting to work at a professional level." The application period is May 1 to May 31. An application form will appear at the Foundation's website on May 1. No previous publishing experience is required. 

Everything about this grant sounds wonderful. The Older Writers Grant page at the Foundation's website looks wonderful. The ad the Foundation released a few days ago...no. This ad is getting a lot of attention on X, and not for the grant itself. What people are talking about is the bizarrely ageist and outdated image it uses.

What's the Problem?

First: The image plays into the stereotype that older people are:

• cute
• frail
• able to do their own shopping, but only small amounts at a time

Second: The image has nothing to do with:

• speculative literature
• writing

In this ad, the text describes the grant precisely. The image, however, is totally unrelated to the text. At best, it adds nothing to it at all. At worst, the image distracts from the text because viewers find it offensive or not to be taken seriously.  

What Could They Have Done Differently?

Go to the Speculative Literature Foundation's Older Writers Grant page, and you will see a terrific image of a mature woman who looks healthy and fit and she is writing. Image of person writing...writing grant. If they had just used her on a professional photo type ad instead going for a cartoon and what looks like clipart, they would have had something fantastic to share.

They could also have looked for a photo of a group of older writers either from a writers' group (I see many of those on my Facebook page) or a writers' conference. They might have been able to find a group of writers that wasn't entirely white, too, which would have been a plus.

A Strange Turn Of Events

As I said earlier, the Speculative Literature Foundation has run this grant for two decades. This is the first I've heard of either the Foundation or the grant. So maybe there's no such thing as bad publicity?

My Annual Earth Day Observance

It's Earth Day, people. Though I have been keeping an eye on my pollinator garden, I have not been keeping up on what's happening environmentally during the month of April, which is something I have done in the past.

However, Earth Day provides me with a good opportunity to mention Saving the Planet & Stuff, a rare eco-comedy. I still don't see much in the way of books for YAs and adults that have environmental threads or are set in a world where the environment plays a significant role that are not about climate change or a disaster brought about by climate change. Though I haven't been looking recently.

Oh, so many things to read about.

Now that I'm obsessing about how older adults are portrayed in books, I will mention that while my editor at G.P. Putnam and I were working on Saving the Planet, she said she'd never seen older adults portrayed as they are here. By which I believe she meant committed, in control, business owners, etc. etc. and not aging hippies. Though Nora and Walt are that, too.

In Which A Woman Of A Certain Age Gets Her Own Story Arc

I learned recently that there are readers out in the world, rather vocal readers, who object to humor created around older characters being placed in what are for them, nontraditional situations. I was very aware that older characters in children's books are often portrayed as frail, ill, and dying. Grandparents and dogs in children's books probably die in equal numbers. But I was a little stunned when I read so many objections to a piece I wrote placing older male authority figures in a situation in which they are out of their element--a children's playground. 

As a result of that experience, I'm feeling one of my little obsessions coming on, this one about how older characters are treated in books. As luck would have it, I just happened to finish reading a Net Galley arc of Facebook friend Gabi Coatsworth's new novel, A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over. The book's main character isn't older older, but as the mother of college students, she is just older. 

Fiftyish Molly Stevenson has been widowed for a few years during which time she purchased a bookstore. She is dealing with two issues as the novel opens--the bookstore isn't doing that well, and she has friends who are pressuring Molly to start dating. Things get worse with the bookstore when the rent is raised. Things get "worse" with the dating situation when she does, indeed, make efforts to meet men. Both story threads place Molly under pressure. Both threads are resolved in a positive way for her.

A mature woman managing on her own. This may not be an unusual main character for a novel these days. In fact, Book Riot has a list from 2019 called 50 Must-Read Fiction Books Featuring Older Women, who may be managing on their own or not. I've only read a couple of them. Many of those books sound a little on the heavy and downer side, though. A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over is not. It has a cozy aspect to it--the bookstore, a coffee shop, trips to an art gallery, friends gathering here and there, and what might be called a destination Christmas. This will be relaxation reading for many people, a very good thing, indeed. 

"A Beginner's Guide" And Women's Fiction. 

I was interested in reading A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over, in part, because I'd seen it described as women's fiction. I have an unsold manuscript that at one point I was submitting as women's fiction. Reading A Beginner's Guide gave me an opportunity to think some more about this.

According to the Women's Fiction Writers Association, women's fiction has as its driving force the "protagonist's journey toward a more fulfilled self." Does a more fulfilled self mean a self that ends up with a romantic partner? Not necessarily. More than one source I found stated that romances have narrative arcs that are totally about a couple's journey toward each other and include a happy ending.

(Here's an aside that requires its own paragraph: I was invited to a romance writers' luncheon around the time The Bridges of Madison County was all over the place. I was told by someone there that some romance writers had an issue with that book being described as a romance, because it didn't have a happy ending. Happy endings are a big component of traditional romance writing.)

At any rate, my superficial research suggests that A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over is, indeed, women's fiction, since the romantic element doesn't encompass the whole story, which is certainly about Molly's journey to a more fulfilled self.  On the other hand, I was probably correct to switch to describing my own manuscript, Good Women, as an upmarket comedy when submitting it. Not that it has done any good to date.

By the way, in What is Women's Fiction?, again at Book Riot, Kendra Winchester points out that there is no comparable genre to "women's fiction" called "men's fiction." That's something to think about.