Susan Buttenwieser

Age: 55. Residence: New York City. Book: We Were Lucky With the Rain (Four Way Books, September 2020), a collection of stories about people grappling with emotional isolation, economic insecurity, and family fragmentation. Agent: None. Editor: Martha Rhodes.

LOSS, rejection, teaching, and a Roxane Gay essay were all ingredients in the publication of my first book at the age of fifty-five. When I was fifty-one, the year