Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

According to The New Yorker's Summer Fiction issue , the odds of anyone writing anything of substance after they turn 40 are not good. That's disheartening, since I haven't seen 40 for more than a decade and in 2 days I'll be one year closer to 60. Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the The New York Time's Sunday Book Review , expands on that theory in his essay "How Old Can a Young Writer Be?" According to Tanenhaus, Herman Melville was 32 when he wrote Moby Dick . But Virginia Woolf didn't enter her prime until she was in her 40s. Pearl S. Buck was only 39 when she wrote The Good Earth , but she was 46 when she wrote Peony , the same year that she received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Should those of us in our 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond, content ourselves with literary obscurity?  Who are your favorite "over 40" authors?   What substantive piece are you working on? ANSWER THE POLL and help me compile an IMPRESSIVE list to fuel our over-40 ambition...

THE WYOMING GLOW I brought home with me after this year’s Literature & Landscape of the Horse Retreat at the Vee Bar Ranch lasted for days. I literally beamed. Not surprising after a week immersed in some of the things I love the most—horses, stories about horses, other writers and artists, and the wide-open western landscape. “I missed you all so much the minute I got on the plane, it nearly broke my heart,” wrote Cat, a guest from Massachusetts. “I'll never forget my week at the ranch, and your kind heart that made it possible for all of us to know each other.” Cat fell in love with landscape, the people, the horses, and most importantly, back in love with life. Life HAPPENS on a ranch—life, and birth, and death, and renewal. The warmth and generosity of families like Kari and Brent Kilmer (co-owners and managers of the Vee Bar ) does not happen by mistake. It rises up from life on the land as organically as do the wild spring irises. Kari’s grandpa ranches only a few...