Merilyn SimondsEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Merilyn Simonds about her bestselling memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-Year-Old Friend (Penguin Random House Canada, 2025). Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life. In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had jus...

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Merilyn Simonds about her bestselling memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-Year-Old Friend (Penguin Random House Canada, 2025). Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life. In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had jus...

Today you'll discover an intergenerational friendship between two women 76 and 105 years old, that got better with age. Walking and talking with your 100+ year old friend is not something you might think was even possible. But it's their reality and my guest wrote a book about it. My guest is Merilyn Simonds. She's the younger half of this intergenerational friendship. Merilyn is also an internationally published and award-winning author of three e-born works of fiction and 20 books overall. Learn more: https://suzyrosenstein.com/podcast/ep-455-walking-and-talking-with-my-100-year-old-friend-intergenerational-friendships-in-midlife-with-merilyn-simonds/

Welcome to the Women Writing podcast. In this episode, I’m taking a coffee break with author Merilyn Simonds. Merilyn Simonds is the internationally published author of 22 books, including the novel The Holding , a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the Canadian classic nonfiction novel, The Convict Lover, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Among her best-selling nonfiction is A New Leaf , the story of her gardens north of Kingston, and Gutenberg’s Fingerprint , a meditation on reading, writing, and the future of the printed book. Her recent book, Woman, Watching , which won the Foreword Indies Editor’s Choice Nonfiction Award for 2022, is an innovative memoir/biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, an extraordinary recluse who changed the way we see birds. Simonds’ memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with my 100-Year-Old Friend is forthcoming from Random House Canada in September, 2025. Do you need some accountability and support? The Women Writing Circle meets on the second and fourth Monday of the month from 6:30-8:00 PM EST with occasional bonus sessions. Come and write with us! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit liisakovalawomenwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Tara chats with a special guest, the prolific and award-winning Canadian author Merilyn Simonds regarding her latest book, Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-year-old Friend. https://merilynsimonds.com/ " In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next? During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future. In Walking with Beth , Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women’s lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day." Recommended Books: The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, My Father, and Me by Emily Urquhart Code Noir: Fictions by Canisia Lubrin We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. When Merilyn Simonds was asked by a friend to be the author of her biography, Merilyn agreed. The problem Merilyn then ran into was that she didn’t like or read biographies, but couldn’t abandon her promise. It wasn’t until Merilyn made an observation, one deeply connected to her friend’s life story, that the biography began to flow. And from the beginning, Merilyn’s ideas allowed her to follow her usual, and unusual path of breaking with writing convention.