Photo by Sari Singerman
Rebecca Knuth is the author of the new memoir London Sojourn: Rewriting Life after Retirement. Her other books include Emily Dickinson Had to Have Curls. She was a professor at the University of Hawaii, and she lives in Portland, Oregon.
Q: What inspired you to write this memoir?
A: I arrived in London, an older woman who was a little lost and wanted joy and a larger life. After scaling emotional mountains there, I turned to memoir writing to understand how I’d arrived where I was in life and figure out what was next.
London Sojourn recounts how I came into my own as a writer and a woman. And it is a celebration of London and living a life of the mind.
Q: The book’s subtitle is “Rewriting Life after Retirement”--how was that subtitle chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The publisher suggested that subtitle and it has a certain ying and yang. I like the linking of writing with self-development and a stage of life that is too often identified with identity foreclosure.
Q: What impact has London had on your life?
A: London has always had territory in my heart and mind, gained first through reading, and then through experiences that supported my imagination and development.
This final post-retirement sojourn taught me that I wanted to be a creative writer and tell stories, that I valued feminism and identified with women writers, that I was tired of driving myself, and that I wanted a home—in America, not England.
Q: How did writing this memoir affect you, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Writing it countered my tendency to careen through life sacrificing reflection. I used life-writing to slow down, probe, and understand myself, to savor my experiences. Late life rumination is like reminiscing on steroids and is, above all, a meaning-making activity.
I also hope readers will cotton to the idea of immersing oneself in a place that is mentally and emotionally engaging. London does it for me and readers may well ask what place resonates with them, what environment could or did literally change their life or their understanding of it.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: In a change of pace, Lethal Matrimony: Serial Killer James P. Watson and his 22 Wives explores the life of a little known early-20th-century sociopath with a fixation on marriage. It is scheduled for publication Spring 2027.
As well, I’m beginning a new memoir, Four Manuscripts, Ten Years: Writing and Ageing.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Every thing I am is in London Sojourn. Please read it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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