Aging and Creativity

Do you struggle with engaging your creative self at this stage of life? Are you interested in exploring your creativity as you age?

In her presentation, author and CALL member Sharon Butala will talk about the creative process, especially as it appears in the elderly and how, it is sometimes said, that creativity is never so strong as in the aged. In the professional writer it takes many years to develop the necessary level of craft, while at the same time, the writer's ideas and wisdom are growing clearer and more assured, humility growing alongside these. But writing is not purely an intellectual exercise. It also requires the hard work of staying in touch with the source of creativity, and thus is an enterprise of the spirit.

Bio: Sharon Butala is the author of 21 books of both fiction and nonfiction. She is perhaps best known for her prize-winning bestseller, The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature. In her 40-plus years long career she has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award three times, the Commonwealth Prize, and the Rogers' Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (now the Atwood-Gibson Prize) and has won the City of Calgary/ W.O. Mitchell Prize, the Marian Engel Prize, the Kloppenburg Prize for Literary Achievement among many others. At 81 she is still writing, her latest book being This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life. She has made Calgary her home since 2008. Sharon has been a member of CALL since 2011. Her many previous presentations to CALL groups have been well received and much appreciated.