In There Was An Old Woman, Andrea Carlisle presents a collection of personal essays that explore this time of life and consider misperceptions, hard truths, needs, and often beautiful complexity. This book is a rallying cry and a rejection of received wisdom about what old age should look like and how old people--especially older women--should feel and behave. In her view, old age is a long walk, not a singular moment, or even a few years, in time. This period of life needs literature for sustenance, with voices that inspire and challenge, as much as any other. Carlisle digs into what old age feels like, how it works, and the ways old women look at themselves, based on the cultural myths handed to them, as well as how they are perceived and marginalized by others. She takes on issues of aging both common (caregiving; vanity; grief; the importance of movement) and uncommon (the expansion of consciousness and curiosity in old age; the impact of how stories about older women are told, and the way the old are excluded as central characters from almost all of literature). She discusses intergenerational bonds, the many forms of ageism, poverty, loneliness, erasure, friendship, art, and a variety of other topics.

“There Was an Old Woman is neither a memoir nor an angry fist-shaking rejection of the stereotypes, but instead a clear-eyed, moving, personal exploration of what it means to be growing older.” — Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek and The Hearts of Horses

"Andrea Carlisle's glorious wry wit and brilliant wisdom has always lit up her readers and listeners so thoroughly that we stand in line waiting for her new book with greatest joy and gusto - as you might stand at an old-fashioned train station trembling to see your long lost loved one coming home at last." -Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People's Poet Laureate, Poetry Foundation

Andrea Carlisle is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop; she taught both fiction and nonfiction for the Oregon Writers’ Workshop and several other writing organizations in Portland for many years. Her work--including stories, essays, poems, novels, and blog posts--has been published by leading literary journals and independent presses; she contributed a column on aging, There Was An Old Woman, to the online feminist magazine ROAR and wrote a popular blog, Go Ask Alice, about caring for her aging mother. This is her first nonfiction book.