Aging Out

A deeply personal investigation into the current state of eldercare and what it means to grow old in America

Unlike many other cultures, our collective stance toward older people in the United States has long been one of casual avoidance and neglect. This attitude became brutally clear during the height of the COVID pandemic, when too many people saw elderly deaths not as tragedies but as foregone conclusions.

Like many of us, Lucy Schiller experienced this callousness firsthand when her grandmother passed away during the pandemic. In the wake of this trauma, propelled by equal parts grief and curiosity about her own fear of aging, Schiller embarked on an investigative journey to understand why the prospect of aging is so frightening and how being “old” in America intersects with class, race, disability, and public policy.

From profit-driven networks of care facilities to systemic failures in economic support, the future of older Americans looks increasingly uncertain. In Aging Out, Schiller reports this crisis, sharing the human toll of inadequate housing, health care, and community, while simultaneously excavating her own complicated relationship with aging.

Combining the incisive reporting of Evicted with the beautifully rendered introspection of The Empathy Exams, Aging Out is an intimate and unflinching exploration of what it means to age in this country and why Americans—including Schiller herself—are so terrified of getting old.

Author Biography

Lucy Schiller is a writer and assistant professor of nonfiction at Texas Tech University, where she also directs the documentary lab Studio E. She earned her MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa in 2018, and she has previously served as the Provost’s Visiting Writer in nonfiction at Iowa and the Olive B. O’Connor fellow in nonfiction at Colgate University. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, the Iowa Review, Literary Hub, the Columbia Journalism Review, and elsewhere.