Kate Braid has never been one to follow the beaten path. In 1977, she broke barriers by stepping—or rather, stumbling—into the male-dominated world of construction. With two beloved memoirs, Journeywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man’s World and Hammer & Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman, she’s shared her journey as a trailblazer in the trades. Now, Kate is back with her signature blend of guts, wit, and warmth, tackling the fresh territory of women, bodies, and aging in her latest memoir, The Erotics of Cutting Grass.

Forget everything you think you know about growing older. Kate Braid’s perspective is anything but conventional. In these love stories to life and living, Kate dismantles the tired clichés about aging and the female body. From weightlifting in her senior years to questioning why older people in love are seen as “cute,” but not “hot,” and even delving into the mysteries of "remembering" past lives, Kate's stories are a refreshing take on what it means to age with audacity.

Travel with Kate as she adventures through France, still gets “checked out” on the street, picks up a new instrument, and has a secret love-affair with a ride-on Husqvarna grass cutter. She also navigates the role of step-mother and contemplates how second- and third-generation immigrants in a new world can truly make this land feel like home. Each chapter is filled with insight, candour, and a rebellious spirit that’s sure to resonate with non-traditional women who refuse to be defined by society’s expectations.

The Erotics of Cutting Grass is a celebration of life’s later chapters, written with the same unique mix of humour, frankness, and vulnerability Kate’s readers have come to know and love. Join her on this smart, thought-provoking journey that redefines what it means to embrace ageing on your own terms.

Kate Braid worked as a receptionist, secretary, teacher’s aide, lumber piler, construction labourer, apprentice and journey-carpenter before finally “settling down”? as a teacher. She has taught construction and creative writing, the latter in workshops and also at SFU, UBC and for ten years at Vancouver Island University (previously Malaspina University-College). She is the author of A Well-Mannered Storm: The Glenn Gould Poems, Covering Rough Ground, To This Cedar Fountain and Inward to the Bones: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Journey with Emily Carr. In 2005 she co-edited, with Sandy Shreve, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry. Braid’s second book of poems about her carpentry experiences, Turning Left to the Ladies, was published by Palimpsest Press. She lives in Burnaby, BC, with her partner.

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“In her new book, Kate Braid brings into engaging focus aspects of her multifaceted life as writer, journeyed carpenter, teacher, wife, stepmother, grandmother and more. Encounters with French culture and cuisine, fears of singing solo, and the advantages of growing older are, like the rest of her subject matter, explored with an impressive emotional clarity and sturdiness of thought: ‘All my life I’ve tried my hand at anything that popped up, everything that got me curious.’ But even more, she demonstrates a masterful ability to transmute into words her skills at observation. Followers of every trade—including carpenter and writer—learn where and how to look in order to improve their own craft.… As a result, we readers get to enjoy her stories, to marvel at how she processes whatever she encounters, and to come away wiser.”

—Tom Wayman, author of The Road to Appledore or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place