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Sari Botton at home in Kingston on April 10, 2026. Botton, who runs two popular Substack publications, is hitting new heights in a long and distinguished career in publishing.<\/p>\n
Barbara Reina\/For the Times Union<\/p>\n
At a time in life when most might be considering retirement, author, editor and teacher Sari Botton<\/a> is having an unexpected career renaissance.<\/p>\n Working from her home in midtown Kingston, Botton, 60, is the editor of the very successful Substack magazine,\u00a0Oldster<\/a>, which has 85,000 subscribers and counting. She was\u00a0recently profiled in the New York Times<\/a>. And an Oldster anthology is slated for release in 2027.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of possibilities when you get older,\u201d she said. \u201cEven in a competitive, slightly daunting field, you can thrive later in life.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that Botton had no success before recently. She has published an essayistic memoir, \u201cAnd You May Find Yourself\u2026\u201d and edited two anthologies of writers writing about New York: \u201cGoodbye to All That,\u201d about loving and leaving the city, and \u201cNever Can Say Goodbye,\u201d where writers extol their unshakeable love for the city. And she has long taught writing at various levels, including leading an essay workshop last month at the\u00a0Southern Vermont Writers\u2019 Conference.<\/p>\n A self-proclaimed \u201cGen X weirdo\u201d and \u201cpioneer gentrifier,\u201d Botton and her husband, Brian, moved to the Hudson Valley 21 years ago after high rents squeezed them out of their Manhattan loft apartment. Since then, Botton has boosted the local creative community as a writer-in-residence and mentor. She believes everyone has the ability to write and stories to tell. Often, they just need the assurance of a skilled guide.<\/p>\n Make the Times Union a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our journalism when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n In this conversation, Botton talks about her surprising career surge, the Hudson Valley creative community, and the discovery of her own ancestral roots in Kingston. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Is this time in your life somehow different, or is it what you expected?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not at all what I expected. It\u2019s way better. I was very afraid of turning 60; I thought my life was not going to line up with what\u2019s expected of people in their 60s. I think, as someone who didn\u2019t have kids, I\u2019m not on the same track as everyone else; my peers are having grandchildren now. But it\u2019s just not for me.<\/p>\n I also didn\u2019t know that this was going to be the best time in my career because, in 2020, when I left Longreads, where I was an editor, I found I couldn\u2019t get a job. I thought it was all over, and now I\u2019m having this renaissance.<\/p>\n People who contribute to Oldster or comment at Oldster keep telling me that their lives improved later, after 60, after 70, even after 80, and now I believe that.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n You call yourself \u201ca late-blooming, Gen-X Weirdo<\/a>\u201d in one of your books.\u00a0 As women of Gen X, do you think we\u2019ve been through a lot of growing pains when it comes to careers, relationships, and our view of ourselves as women?<\/p>\n I think that Gen X is a very confused demographic because we had parents who started out one way, then switched gears during the sexual revolution and the divorce boom, so it was very confusing to us \u2014 the messages of how to be an adult, what does an adult look like. We watched our parents have a belated second adolescence. So, after being raised for a certain number of years by these sort-of formal parents, we were suddenly being raised by people who were breaking all the rules. \u00a0I think it has led to a lot of confusion among Gen X about how to be grownups.<\/p>\n Sari Botton with a copy of \u201cGoodbye to All That\u201d at the Union Square Barnes and Noble in 2013.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Sari Botton<\/p>\n Do you think memoir writing gets better with age?<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Definitely. I think there are a lot of older people writing short memoirs, personal essays and longer memoirs now, and I\u2019m really here for it. I recently started a feature called Oldster Bookshelf<\/a>, where I feature books by older people, and there are a lot of great memoirs. The older you are, the more experience you have, the more you have to say, and \u2014 if you have been writing for a long time \u2014 the more confident you are in your voice and your style.<\/p>\n As an editor, teacher, and bestselling former ghostwriter, you stated that <\/a>you\u2019ve learned how to gently coax important, compelling stories out of people. Can you elaborate?<\/p>\n Memoir writing is anxiety-provoking. You\u2019re revealing yourself, and you can\u2019t do it without revealing some things about other people, even if you blur your identities. So, it makes people nervous. It helps to have a nurturing guide who can help you find your voice, be confident in your voice, talk to you about the challenges and how to overcome them. I try to be that person.<\/p>\n What is an average day like for you?<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n I work 12 hours most days. I get up at 7 a.m. and get right to work until 7 p.m. I also work on the weekends, editing Oldster and Memoir Land<\/a> (another Substack Botton oversees). They\u2019re both doing really well, so I can\u2019t just abandon them, and they both scratch certain itches for me. Memoir Land is not focused on age; it\u2019s about any subject and it lets me continue the work I was doing at Longreads and Catapult, editing personal essays on any subject by anybody.<\/p>\n So, I\u2019m working a lot. I love it. It\u2019s also my strategy for surviving these times: being busy, too busy to focus on (the global political climate).<\/p>\n How has living in Kingston affected your writing?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been in the area for 21 years now. First, we were in Rosendale, then we moved to Kingston. There\u2019s a lot of creative community around here. Almost all my friends are writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, so it\u2019s a very fertile place to be inspired and supported by other people.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n I love living in Midtown Kingston. I can walk two blocks to restaurants, the Upstate Films movie theater, UPAC. There\u2019s so much for me to walk to, uptown, downtown, ride my bike. It\u2019s a nice, small city.<\/p>\n For three years, I also operated a coworking space called Kingston Writers Studio, which closed in 2020 due to the pandemic. It was very social and nice to work in the presence of other writers. I grieve it (but) I can\u2019t afford to do it again. Rents were so low back then.<\/p>\n After you chose Kingston as your home, what surprising fact did you discover about your family roots in Ulster County?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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