Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: March 9, 2025

Issue 149

Hello, Creative Writers!

All of us are familiar with the term “late-bloomer”—someone who develops their talent and success later than expected in a given field, achieving recognition at an older age than their peers. We ran across an inspiring article on a late-blooming writer named Gill Johnson. At 92, she made her publishing debut with Love from Venice: A Golden Summer on the Grand Canal, a memoir released last year by Hachette, one of the largest publishing companies in the UK. Her book, which recounts the life-changing months she spent in Italy in 1957, has received critical acclaim—and it’s Johnson’s first time putting pen to paper.

For the majority of her life, Johnson worked at a job which funded the education of her four sons—she imported sorbet from the Rhône Valley region of France. In an article about Johnson’s interesting journey from sorbet specialist to notable memoirist, Janice Harayda (author and columnist) explores the factors that contributed to Johnson’s late-blooming…