I’ve been an Orange County woman since 1966 when I was fourteen and my father’s aerospace job transferred him to Santa Monica from Charlotte, North Carolina. The Beach Boys sang about “California Girls” on the radio as we drove across the country. I couldn’t wait to be one, but when we settled in Fountain Valley, California, I realized I didn’t quite fit the profile. I wasn’t blond, my skin never tanned, and I wasn’t allowed to wear a French bikini.
I’ve never felt like a true California girl, but almost sixty years later, California is still my home. And now, as “a woman of a certain age in youth-obsessed California,” I’m delighted to be included in a new anthology from Gunpowder Press, Women in a Golden State, California Poets at 60 and Beyond.
The anthology “invites readers to reconsider aging not as an end, but as an ongoing journey—one filled with beauty, strength, and boundless possibilities.” In celebration of the 175th anniversary of California’s statehood, the Gunpowder Press editors selected 175 contributors from across California, which allows a wide spectrum of territory and voices. Orange County is part of the mix, from Disneyland to Dana Point, from Fullerton to Balboa Island, and from the mouth of the Santa Ana River to the community swimming pools in Irvine.
