Silver medal for the 4th Annual Living Now Book Awards

Now past her eightieth birthday, Naomi Beth Wakan is well-placed to be writing about aging. Qualifying between merely being old and old-old, she considers retirement homes, elder abuse, death and the often thorny question of what to call people once they're past retirement. With humour and honesty she looks at the disconnect between how she sees herself and how the world sees her and concludes it's this inner view that decides nearly everything about aging.

Naomi Beth Wakan's profile page

Naomi Beth Wakan has written over thirty books, including Images of Japan, Segues, Late Bloomer: On Writing Later in Life, Compositions: Notes on the written word and Book Ends: A year between the covers. Her book Haiku: one breath poetry was an American Library Association selection. Her essays, haiku and tanka have appeared in many magazines and anthologies and have been broadcasted on the CBC. Naomi lives on Gabriola Island with her husband, sculptor Elias Wakan.

"Her descriptions of life with Eli in their vinyl-sided, now mortgage-free, cottage on Gabriola Island, are really the best parts of the book. They're enchanting, warm-hearted and a reminder that it's really the appreciation for the ordinary things that keeps one connected to life." - Vancouver Sun

"In this roller-coaster of brief chapters, with poems scattered throughout, she addresses the 'small and personal,' with no big dramas and a lot of questions, confronting head-on the expected questions." - BC Bookworld