Lee Gutkind has made several costume changes in his life. The fatigues of the U.S. Coast Guard. The leather of a biker. The black T-shirt of a beatnik. The tweed of a college professor. But through it all, one thing has remained the same: He is a writer.
This month, at age 75, the SFIS professor published his memoir, “My Last Eight Thousand Days: An American Male in his Seventies,” a deeply personal reflection on the journey that brought him to where he is now, revealing all the discomforts of his latest costume change — that of an older man.
Gutkind will discuss the book with sustainability scholar Steven Beschloss, director of ASU’s Narrative Storytelling Initiative, in a live Zoom event co-hosted by Changing Hands Bookstore at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20. An excerpt from the book is available to read now at the online magazine Transformations, a collaboration between the Narrative Storytelling Initiative and the Los Angeles Review of Books that features essays inspired by the belief that sharing transformative stories has the power to influence the trajectory of our lives.