Hilma Wolitzer, 92, on Writing Through Grief and Turning Domestic Life Into Art

[B]OLD AGE With Debbie Weil

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Hilma Wolitzer, 92, on Writing Through Grief and Turning Domestic Life Into Art

Debbie Weil

Jul 01, 2022

Today, Debbie talks to writer and novelist Hilma Wolitzer, age 92.

She’s just published a new book of short stories titled "Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket." So yes, this is someone who is "making the most of growing older."

Hilma's stories of sharply observed domestic life were published in the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire in the 1960s and 1970s. She has taught writing at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, NYU, and Columbia. She's also the author of nine novels and the recipient of national awards and fellowships.

Her husband of almost 70 years died of COVID in the first months of the pandemic. It was as if he vanished, she told Debbie.

She and her husband Morty both got Covid in April of 2020. They were taken to separate hospitals in New York City.

She never got to say good-bye.

He died two days before she was released from the hospital and went home to her apartment.

As she tells Debbie on the podcast:

"There were his slippers next to the bed. There was a pair of his drugstore eyeglasses. He seemed to have vanished and that was the sense I tried to depict in (the final) story (of her new book). Disappearance rather than dying."

She was encouraged to write through her grief, and to write this story and add it to a new collection, by her daughters: New York Times bestselling novelist Meg Wolitzer and artist Nancy Wolitzer.

She titled the new story, "The Great Escape." It is as diamond sharp and perfect - and funny - as her earlier writing. There's even sex.

Hilma tells it all in this conversation:

What her writing process is
Why she writes about ordinary domestic life
Why and how she wrote through grief
What it was like, over 50 years ago, to be a woman and a writer and not be taken seriously

Mentioned in this episode or useful:

HilmaWolitzer.com
Wikipedia
Twitter
The Great Escape is Hilma‘s final short story in her new collection, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket (Bloomsbury Publishing; 2021)
Hilma is mentioned in the first sentence: One Million (New York Times, May 13, 2022)
Hilma’s daughter Nancy Wolitzer
Hilma’s daughter Meg Wolitzer
How Hilma Wolitzer Came Back From Covid Tragedy To Publish Her First Book In 8 Years—At The Age Of 91 (Forbes, Oct 22, 2021)
Author Hilma Wolitzer lost her husband to COVID-19. So at 91, she wrote a story about it (LA Times, Aug. 26, 2021)
Iris Murdoch
Maxine Kumin

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[B]OLD AGE With Debbie Weil

A podcast about [b]oldly moving from midlife to old age in a society that devalues and/or misunderstands old people. Debbie interviews authors, experts, and exceptional individuals. Now in their early 70s, she and her husband, physician author Sam Harrington, have been exploring an un-retired life for the past decade on an island off the coast of Maine. LISTEN HERE OR ON APPLE PODCASTS.

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