On Topic: Growing Old in America with Lucy Schiller (“Aging Out”) and Jason England

Photo Credit: Court Kessler. Photo Courtesy: Flatiron Books.

When a global pandemic put the world in a standstill, the fallout pushed everyone toward connection. Or at least, that’s what one would expect. In the United States, the pandemic revealed and exacerbated a brutal truth we often ignore: that growing old in the States often means getting left behind. 

With Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old (July 14), author Lucy Schiller presents a stunning and deeply personal investigation into the current state of eldercare and what it means to grow old in America. 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.

Lucy 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, she 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.

While the book addresses nationwide issues, Pittsburgh residents should pay special attention to this impactful new work, as it is deeply informed by the author’s time living and conducting research in Pittsburgh. 

This reading and conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A and a public reception with complimentary drinks and snacks for all in-person attendees. 

You can purchase a copy of Lucy’s book, Aging Out, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Lucy Schiller is a nonfiction writer. Her work has been published at the Columbia Journalism Review, The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, West Branch, Speculative Nonfiction, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She was the Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Nonfiction at Colgate University (2020–2021) and the Provost’s Visiting Writer in Nonfiction at the University of Iowa (2018–2019). She received her MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She is an assistant professor of nonfiction at Grinnell College.

About the Moderator:

Jason England was born and raised in New York City, where he spent his youth between a welfare hotel for the homeless in Times Square and a Harlem housing project. He has been a soda salesperson, a camp counselor, a parking lot attendant, a waiter, a bartender, a civil rights activist, a dean of college admissions, and has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin, and Carnegie Mellon University, where he spent the past 7 years. His short fiction has been anthologized, and his writing on race, meritocracy, education, sports, film, and culture has appeared and been cited in various academic journals, books, and publications, including The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, and Defector. His memoir, The Cause of the Fatherless, is forthcoming from Doubleday. 

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is closed on Tuesdays, but there will be a public reception with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and drinks following the program.