Hi, I’m Ruth.

At sixty I sold the house, bought a typewriter and started writing down the things I had been listening to all my life. Now I write one letter every Sunday, and a book when the letters add up to one.

For thirty-four years my job was to write down every word and keep none of them. When I retired I found I had been saving them anyway: the way people talk when they are frightened, or relieved, or starting again. The letter is where I write them out. Most Sundays it's a short essay and a book I've been reading; sometimes it's a letter from a reader who started over too.