Introduction
Janet Burroway
Julia Alvarez
The Older Writer in the Underworld
Margaret Atwood
On Craft
Madeleine Blais
The Ratio Is Narrowing
Rosellen Brown
Parsing Ambition
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mothers and Daughters
Toi Derricotte
The Offices of My Heart
Gail Godwin
Working on the Ending
Patricia Henley
The Potholder Model of Literary Ambition
Erica Jong
Breaking the Final Taboo
Marilyn Krysl
Passing It On
Maxine Kumin
Metamorphosis: From Light Verse to the Poetry of Witness
Honor Moore
On Certainty
Alicia Ostriker
Splitting Open: Some Poems on Aging
Linda Pastan
Old Woman, or Nearly So Myself: An Essay in Poems
Edith Pearlman
Public Appearances
Hilda Raz
Say Yes
Jane Smiley
Boys and Girls
Laura Tohe
The Stories from Which I Come
Hilma Wolitzer
What I Know
Acknowledgments
Contributors