The Writing Menopause literary anthology is a diverse and robust collection about menopause, a highly charged and often undervalued transformation. It comprises over fifty works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, interviews and cross-genre pieces from contributors across Canada and the United States that break new ground in portraying menopause in literature. The collection includes literary work from award-winning writers such as Roberta Rees, Margaret Macpherson, Lisa Couturier and Rona Altrows. Emerging voices such as Rea Tarvydas, Leanna McLennan, Steve Passey and Gemma Meharchand, and an original interview with trans educator and pioneering filmmaker Buck Angel, are also featured.

This anthology fills a sizable gap, finding the ground between punchline and pathology, between saccharine inspiration and existential gloom. The authors neither celebrate nor demonize menopause. These are diverse depictions, sometimes lighthearted, but just as often dark and scary. Some voices embrace the prospect of change, others dread it. Together, this unique offering reflects the varied experience of menopause and shatters common stereotypes.

Reviews & Interviews

“Review: Writing Menopause”. Prairie Fire Magazine, July 10, 2019

“REVIEW: Anthology explores the underreported topic of menopause”. This Magazine, March 2017.
“Writing Menopause is a revolutionary collection of work passionately and bravely confronting menopause, a topic society tends to avoid. Featuring several types of writing, editors Jane Cawthorne and E.D. Morin expertly assemble a meaningful collection written from a diverse cross-section of North Americans. Though the styles and the writers are so varied, the book flows seamlessly from one piece to the next. The writers explore every aspect of this phase in life, from perimenopause to hot flashes, and the feeling of loss to the stigma menopause has on a person’s mental state. The anthology sets the stage for future public conversations about the end of menstruation.”

Review: Writing Menopause. Canadian Woman Studies Vol. 32, No 1,2
Laura Wershler writes, “It is the book you read when you want to know how menopause feels, how it is experienced by women like you and not like you. It’s the book men should read if they want to better understand the women in their lives. It’s the book health-care practitioners should read to help them see beyond the symptoms presented by women advancing toward or already in menopause. Menopause may be the destination, but it is the scenic road trip all women take to get there that makes for the compelling writing in this anthology…. [As contributor Jane] Silcott writes: ‘No one cheers you on through menopause.’ They do now.”

Review: Writing Menopause. FreeFall Magazine. December 1, 2019.
Shelley McAneeley says, “Clear your throats ladies and speak up, your daughters wait. This is a daring book that tosses an emotional topic around like a hot potato. A roller-coaster read and a must for women of all ages.”

“Writing Menopause – You Must Read This Book!”. Menopause Goddess Blog – July 24, 2017
“It’s breathtaking. Literally. And hot-flashing, mind melding, heart touching, beautiful. I actually think ALL women would love this book, not just those of us who are approaching, well in, or past menopause.”

Writing Menopause: interview with Jane Cawthorne. Women Writers, Women’s Books
May 15, 2017
“Like all writers, we went through the arduous process of pitching the book and finding a publisher. We’re happy to have been accepted by Inanna Publications, a great feminist publisher in Canada. They have been wonderfully supportive. And although most of the contributors are Canadian, the book includes writers from New York, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, California, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Virginia and Maine. It’s great to have this wide representation.”

Read all reviews on the Inanna web page for Writing Menopause, under the ‘Reviews’ tab.

Praise for Writing Menopause

“We live it but we don’t often talk about it publicly. Reading this book is like joining a hot conversation of distinct voices, each with a unique approach to storytelling. Their stories are clever, funny, and sometimes, bloody embarrassing. They talk about living with symptoms that keep you awake, melt your skin and your patience, and make you loud, cranky, and tearful. Their stories tell us how menopause shifted their thinking about their bodies, aging, fertility, sexuality and gender identity. When I finished the last page I felt as free as I did getting to the other side of menopause.”
– Diana L. Gustafson, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, and co-author of Reproducing Women: Family and Health Work Across Three Generations

“Strong women. Sexy women. Funny, proud, and beautiful women, living life to the full and in charge of their own destiny. Sometimes hot and sweaty, but never afraid. This anthology of poetry and prose provides an inspirational insight into the complexity of women’s experience of menopause. There may be lows, but these are far outweighed by the highs. Reading this book made me both laugh and cry, and feel glad to be a woman at mid-life. I recommend it highly.”
– Jane M. Ussher, author of The Madness of Women: Myth and Experience, and The Psychology of the Female Body 

“This volume breaks the silence surrounding menopause through women’s stories of their own experiences of this important life transition. It should be essential reading for health practitioners, women’s health researchers, and women living through, or anticipating, this phase of their lives. As the accounts in this book demonstrate, it can often be the best phase.”
– Janette Perz, Director of the Centre for Health Research, Western Sydney University

“Writing Menopause is the first mixed-genre anthology I know of that explores menopause, a subject that still seems shrouded in codes of silence. This anthology sings its subject loud and proud, and for this reason alone it is worth the price of admission.”
– Mariam Pirbhai, Professor and President, Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (CACLALS), and author of Outside People and Other Stories“Remember the not-so-distant past, when women didn’t speak about menopause—except in tones that expressed diminishing dread, as if a women’s worth was connected to fertility and birth. This collection will help to evolve arcane perceptions. As every woman’s experience with menopause is unique, so is every piece in this collection. The more we listen and the more we speak, the more our wisdom surges. The more we learn about our woman-beings, the more we reframe the myths that have isolated us from true nature—from the wild we have in our spirits.”
– Sheri-D Wilson, Poet