Nonfiction Writing Program Alumna Lucy Schiller (MFA '18) will read from her new book, Aging Out, at Prairie Lights Books.
A profoundly personal investigation into the current state of eldercare and what it means to grow old in America"Schiller unpacks a complicated subject with curiosity and empathy...[A] deeply human portrayal of what it means to get older in a society unprepared to care for its most vulnerable."—Publishers Weekly
Unlike many other cultures, our collective stance toward older people in the United States has long been one of casual avoidance and neglect. This attitude became brutally clear during the height of the COVID pandemic, when too many people saw elderly deaths not as tragedies but as foregone conclusions. Like many of us, Lucy Schiller experienced this callousness firsthand when her grandmother passed away during the pandemic. In the wake of this trauma, propelled by equal parts grief and curiosity about her own fear of aging, Schiller embarked on an investigative journey to understand why the prospect of aging is so frightening and how being “old” in America intersects with class, race, disability, and public policy.From profit-driven networks of care facilities to systemic failures in economic support, the future of older Americans looks increasingly uncertain. In Aging Out, Schiller reports this crisis, sharing the human toll of inadequate housing, health care, and community, while simultaneously excavating her own complicated relationship with aging.Combining the incisive reporting of Evicted with the beautifully rendered introspection of The Empathy Exams, Aging Out is an intimate and unflinching exploration of what it means to age in this country and why Americans—including Schiller herself—are so terrified of getting old.
I’m a writer and assistant professor of nonfiction based in Iowa City, IA. I’m also a contributing writer to the Columbia Journalism Review.
My work has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The Cleveland Review of Books, The Iowa Review, Off Assignment, West Branch, DIAGRAM, Speculative Nonfiction, The New Yorker, Popula, Essay Daily, Goodnight, Sweet Prince, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. I graduated with an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2018, where I was also an Iowa Arts Fellow, and I was the Olive B. O’Connor fellow in nonfiction at Colgate University from 2020-2021.