Chicory Blue Press: The Crimson Edge

The Crimson Edge: Older Women Writing

Edited by Sondra Zeidenstein
1-887344-01-2
$16.95

An anthology of fiction, memoir and poetry by seven women past the age of sixty.* Each author’s creative writing is followed by an Afterword in which she talks about what is currently on her mind as an artist.

Editor Zeidenstein breaks new ground with her compilation of fiction, memoirs, and verse by seven women aged 63-87. The seven write of their fathers, such as Carrie Allen McCray of hers, “Born of that first generation out of slavery”; of their survival, such as Anneliese Wagner recalling her flight from Nazi Germany in haunting poetry; and of their yearnings, such as, in Zeidenstein’s own case, the desire to always be the first. Particularly noteworthy are Alvia Golden’s outstanding short story that dramatizes the schizophrenia of a lesbian’s closeted life with cutting humor (“I’m so deep in the closet, I’m screwing with moths”) and Tema Nason’s “Dance Steps,” which details the choreography, so to speak, of an older woman’s romance with a younger man. Wide-ranging, the collection deserves to find as broad an audience. Whitney Scott, Booklist

As one of these women writes: “none of us should sell ourselves short,” and none of them do. A revolutionary book! Carolyn G. Heilbrun

*Alvia Golden, Rita Kiefer, Estelle Leontief, Carrie Allen McCray, Tema Nason, Anneliese Wagner, Sondra Zeidenstein