I’m not just an old lady

A Q&A with acclaimed author Hilma Wolitzer, still writing at 94, after publishing 15 books

This is one in a series of Q&As with [b]old women, about their writing and their life. - Debbie

“I’m not just an old lady. I contain multitudes–all the stages of my life, all the ages I’ve ever been.” - Hilma Wolitzer

When Hilma Wolitzer came on my [B]older podcast two years ago, she was 92 and just about to publish her fifteenth book, a collection of short stories¹ spanning her career as a writer and culminating in a story she wrote after her husband² of almost 70 years died of COVID. “It was as if he vanished,” she told me on the podcast.

She and Morty both got Covid in April of 2020. They were taken to separate hospitals in New York City, but 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 me in the opening seconds of the podcast (click to listen): “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 the collection: disappearance rather than dying.” 

Listen to the episode with Hilma

🎙️ The episode with Hilma Wolitzer is one of my favorites from the 100-plus episodes of the [B]older podcast.

Hilma Wolitzer at home in NYC.

Hilma is a marvelous writer, magically simple. Her language is straightforward, her syntax conversational. Her accounts of domestic life, relationships, and ordinary people remind me of Elizabeth Strout³. They both say so much about the human condition. 

After telling me about her final short story two years ago, I knew I wanted to get back in touch with Hilma. What follows is a short but poignant Q&A with Hilma about her personal and writing life. 

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. More about her at hilmawolitzer.com.

DW: What is your morning ritual? Tell us everything! What time do you get up? Coffee? Do you journal? Do you take a walk? If you’re in writing mode, do you write everyday?

HW: I have the privilege of not having to set an alarm clock, of not having to go to a job or get children off to school–the perks of old age. I don’t write every day, but when I do write, I keep long, irregular hours. My fictional characters are better than any alarm clock. No, I don’t keep a journal, but coffee, the newspaper, strength exercises, and long walks are all parts of my daily routine, as they have always been.

DW: You are a critically-acclaimed and award-winning author and you’ve taught writing. What are your two or three best writing tips?

HW: Read. Revise.

DW: What’s it like to be 94? 

HW: Surprising! Whenever I wake up, I expect to be able to see, hear, and walk the way I did when I was younger, to bound out of bed and get busy. I guess I forget, momentarily, that I’m old. Reality quickly sets in, though, along with my hearing aids, walker, etc., and acceptance. How lucky I am to still be alive in my nineties.

DW: You lost your husband during Covid. What has it been like for you to be living solo in your 90s. Any tips for the rest of us? 

HW: Living alone after 68 (!) years of marriage was quite an adjustment. I’d never lived alone before. I still refer to Morty’s side of the bed and sleep on mine. There are so many things I want to tell and ask him. I miss his physical presence, his voice, and our conversations, especially at mealtimes. I have a stack of literary magazines on the table that keep me company during supper–other writers’ voices.

DW: How has your creative process changed over time?

HW: That’s an interesting question, one I’ve asked myself. When I wrote my most recent short story, at ninety, I was surprised by how familiar the process felt: the rush of ideas falling easily into prose, the need to keep working, almost without pause. That story was twenty-eight typed pages long and I had a polished draft in about a week. Pretty much like the writing habits of my younger self. But now I’m ninety-four and although ideas and characters—even whole sentences—still come into my head, I don’t feel the old impulse (compulsion) to write them down.  I’m not sure if it’s just laziness, a loss of ambition, or something cellular. I always thought I wrote for the same reason I read—to find out what happens next. At least I haven’t lost my curiosity!

P.S. Hilma is far too modest. She recently published, in the New York Times, a review of Mark Haddon’s new story collection, Dogs and Monsters.

DW: What does [b]old age mean to you?

HW: Not the proverbial wisdom I’m supposed to have accumulated. In fact I regret not having learned more by now–the books I haven’t read, the places I haven’t seen.  But I’m not just an old lady. I contain multitudes–all the stages of my life, all the ages I’ve ever been. 

And there is the wonderful bounty of an expanding family: children⁴ and their spouses, grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. I’m still very interested in and deeply worried about the larger world, about the future, even if I won’t be in it.

DW: Do you consider yourself an ambitious person? Has your ambition about writing or life changed as you’ve gotten older? 

HW: I was quite ambitious when I was younger. My friend, Linda Pastan⁵, the late, great poet, and I used to (sort of) joke about achieving “fame and fortune.” In our later years we cared more about writing well and honestly.  

DW: What’s the biggest surprise about reaching old age?

HW: That I made it, and that I’m still sentient. Both of my parents lived to a great old age–my genetic heritage–but they both developed dementia. I’m grateful to still have all my marbles.  Not that I don’t worry when I can’t find my keys. 

DW: What is your biggest regret when it comes to life or writing?

HW: I was a late bloomer–my first short stories appeared in my mid-thirties, and my first novel in my mid-forties. Sometimes I wish I had started writing earlier, but maybe I had nothing to say yet, maybe I had to  gather more experience before I was ready to write. (Or maybe I should have lived a more interesting life.). 

DW: Looking back, what is one thing you are especially proud of?

HW: There are three things. My family, my enduring friendships, my work. 

DW: Are you afraid of death or dying?

HW: I think about death, of course, with trepidation and curiosity. 

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Hilma, thank you so much for your wisdom and insights. - Debbie

Questions for readers

• If you are a writer, do you think you will be writing into your 90s?

• Do you have a regret when it comes to writing or life?

• What’s your favorite answer from Hilma’s Q&A?

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1. Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022) 

2. Hilma and her husband Morty were mentioned in the first sentence of The New York Times article, One Million, about the known deaths from Covid.

3. Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kittredge.

4. Hilma is the mother of two daughters: bestselling novelist Meg Wolitzer and artist Nancy Wolitzer.

5. Linda Pastan was known for her poems about domestic life, as well as aging, death and loss.