Anne Fox, who, with the decades, has stretched the concept of middle age to its limits, spends most of her time copy editing the work of others—novelists, essayists, short-story writers, practitioners of fiction and nonfiction in both a small newspaper and a literary newsletter. (The MacArthur Metro in Oakland and Write Angles, California Writers Club, Berkeley Branch). As a kibitzing editor, she applies “the stick of compassion” to hollow-eyed writers, cajoling them to finish that manuscript, write that query letter, create that book proposal.