Contributors

Illustrator Vanessa Lovegrove took a thoughtful approach to creating the artwork for the “Women, Sex & Aging” feature (page 50) and our cover celebrating aging in Marin. “For the article, I was inspired to subvert the typical expectations of an older woman’s sexuality by placing her as a renaissance figure in a flower, which is imagery often reserved for young women, to say she is still blossoming and beautiful,” Lovegrove says. “I took that approach to vitality in my design for the cover, too — I wanted to highlight the myriad reasons why Marin is a great place to age.”

Award-winning Marin Independent Journal writer and book author

Vicki Larson wrote the first-person essay “Women, Sex & Aging” (page 50) with the intention to provoke dialogue and change readers’ notions about sexuality after menopause. “I would hope that as a society we would celebrate the fact that being a sexual, sensual woman has no expiration date, and that being postmenopausal is liberating for many women and the people who love them,” she says.

Documentary work is a primary focus for Corte Madera-based

photographer Tim Porter, who photographed Olympian Nathan Adrian for “Head First” (page 33). “I do a lot of documentary work and, for me, photography is all about the connection between the camera and

whoever is in front of it, and since I’m holding the camera this means between that person and me,” Porter says. “Even in a photograph that is arranged, as opposed to spontaneous, I’m drawn to that momentary shared instant of intimacy between subject and image-maker.”

“I generally shoot with natural light for food photography, but there’s something fun and eye-catching about using strobes to make food saturated and sharp,” says San Francisco-based photographer Lori Eanes, who shot the recipes for “Eat Well, Age Well” (page 36). “It feels fresh, happy, and both modern and retro. It seemed like

the perfect way to shoot these healthy summer recipes.”

Local freelance writer Maria De La O

learned a lot about why Marin County is such a great place to age when she wrote “Life Lessons” (page 44), and was especially intrigued by the Buck Institute for Research on

Aging’s formidable Novato campus and ambitious research goals. “I learned that the Buck Institute was

the first research home of its kind in

the world, a hub specifically dedicated to research on aging,” she says.