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The stipulation? It had to be writing from women over 60.
"Women over 60 have become almost invisible beings," explained Sherri Daley, a Fairfield resident. "I wanted to make sure they had a voice...myself included."
"What We Talk About When We're Over 60" is a combination of essays that are whimsical, raw, and fun.
The title gets its inspiration from Raymond Carver's iconic short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." In it, two couples sit around a kitchen table talking until the sun goes down. Although their conversation is ostensibly about love, they drift around the topic, revealing more about their lives as the afternoon wanes.
At the end of the story, one of the wives asks, “Now what?” And the narrator writes: "I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."
Daley said that's what her book is about: "A collection of human noise and heartbeats from women who have been around – not quite as long as the dinosaurs, but long enough to have something intelligent, funny, bawdy, or deeply moving to say."
Daley is also the author of "High Cotton," the story of Philip Hehmeyer, the young president of the New York Cotton Exchange who committed suicide in 1982. In addition, she has written for More Magazine, Car & Driver, and the New York Times, as well as Coastal Connecticut, where you can find her byline on a regular basis.
She and some of the other writers in the book do readings and seminars at area libraries, bookstores, and senior centers -- "basically anywhere anyone wants us," she said.
Their next scheduled reading is set for Founder's Hall in Ridgefield Feb. 26 as well as at Fairfield Library (date to be determined).
Go to www.sherridaley.com/ for more information.
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