The Story of Tower Tales

Retirement communities are hotbeds of talent, and one of the gifts that many residents of Kendal at Granville display is the ability to write. It was that realization that served as the starting point for Tower Tales.

Several years ago a group of residents decided that Kendal at Granville, though still but three years old, had come of age, and that it was time for residents to create a journal through which Kendal authors could share their writings with their friends and neighbors and perhaps with the wider world. Getting started was easy: a group of six residents volunteered to constitute an initial editorial board, the Residents Council approved an application for start-up funding, a competition for a choosing a title for the publication was launched, and manuscripts were solicited. Right on schedule, the first issue of Tower Tales appeared, and the residents of Kendal at Granville had a literary journal of their own.

Since the inaugural issue in late 2009, two more have appeared and the fourth is on schedule to be published in February or March of 2011. The semi-annual pace suits the community fine. Meanwhile, the number of contributors has grown to well over twenty, and solicitations for submissions now generate enough manuscripts to necessitate holding some pieces over for later issues. The experiment has proven successful.

That Kendal at Granville should be home to a cluster of authors, whether newbies or veterans, is not a surprise. Like any retirement community, our residents collectively embody a variety of rich and diverse career trajectories -- lawyers, builders, doctors, housewives, civil servants, teachers, clergy, nurses, managers, librarians, salespeople, artists, architects, writers, accountants, innkeepers, members of the military, entrepreneurs, professors; and the list goes on. These careers and the interactions that they afforded have provided the grist from which creative minds can generate imaginative depictions of life. Even if some of the writers have never before thought of themselves as authors!

But if the sheer number of Kendal authors is not surprising, the variety of genres they have created is. Tower Tales has published poems and short stories, political commentary and a book review, reminiscences and humorous tales, musings and inspirational essays. The effort to find a suitable format has led to the inclusion of photographs in the more recent issues. The journal has established itself as an important element in the social and cultural life of Kendal. And it stands as a tribute to the imaginative spirit of the residents of the community.