Aging Out Loud
New Anthology from Santa Barbara Poets
Gives Older Women a Powerful Platform
By Tiana Molony | August 21, 2025
Read more from our 2025 Active Aging Guide here.
When Santa Barbara–based author and poet Diana Raab started brainstorming ideas for her next project, she hit a wall — and a sturdy one at that. Usually, when a writer finds themselves in that kind of rut, the most logical thing to do is turn to a trusty friend. So, that’s exactly what she did.
Raab reached out to author Chryss Yost, who asked the kind of simple yet powerful question that can usually nudge any creative out of a lull: What’s been on your mind? “Well, I just turned 70,” Raab replied. “So, aging has been on my mind.”
It was this conversation that ultimately led to Women in a Golden State — a poetry book co-edited by Raab and Yost, featuring a collection of works by women in California who are aged 60 and beyond. Officially released on May 11, 2025, by Santa Barbara–based Gunpowder Press, the book gathers 175 poets from across the state — a number chosen to mark California’s 175th anniversary — including 20 poets from Santa Barbara.
More than a showcase of talent, the book’s mission is to give older women a platform — a chance for their voices to be heard. “As women age, their relationship with the world changes,” reflects Yost. She notes that women may go from being objectified or sexualized when young to feeling almost invisible. “Because,” she says, “our society doesn’t really know how to recognize the wisdom of our elders.” The book offers older women an opportunity to reclaim their power. “They’re bringing their experience to share, through whatever form their art or their creative expression takes.”
The response to their call for submissions on Submittable was immediate and overwhelming. They had to close it early after receiving more entries than expected, a sign of how many older women long for such a platform. “It provides a sense of agency and power for those who feel silenced,” Raab says. “A lot of elders feel silenced and ignored, and so it’s giving them a forum to voice their feelings.”
For Raab, this project felt like a full-circle moment. Her very first college paper, written at age 18 in a New York community college, was titled “Aging Gracefully.” “I don’t remember what was my inspiration then,” she says, “but I can just imagine that I wanted a sense of what my aging process would be like.”
Raised in an immigrant family with grandparents at home, she often heard conversations about aging and health. Today, she sees the process as “a journey” — one of “constant self-discovery.” It’s that journey — in all its forms — that fills the pages of Women in a Golden State.
As the editors discovered, the beauty of the project lies not only in the number of voices but also in their variety. The collection brings together emerging and accomplished writers, which Raab finds “very inspiring, especially for the new poets, to be right beside very established poets.”
For many, poetry becomes a way to be heard — to share wisdom, preserve legacy, and connect with others. “We wanted to give people who wanted to talk about their experience as aging women the opportunity to share their voice and to learn from each other,” Yost explains. “It wasn’t just for the readers, but it’s for the other poets as well.”
The poems and essays span subjects from love to loss, but each explores a transformative life experience. “[Older women] have a lifetime of wisdom to share,” Raab notes. It’s a sentiment Yost also carries forward, seeing poetry as a vessel that can hold that wisdom at any stage, unbound by the limits of body or place. As she says, “I think there’s a lot of wisdom within those pages.”
For more information and to purchase the book, see gunpowderpress.com.
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