CarolVanKlompenburg.com

Winsome Writing, Professional Presentations

Welcome!

. . . and a special welcome to Boomer and Gen X visitors.. If you are searching  for ways to flourish as the years pass, you have found the right place. I've been researching how to flourish in later life for several decades--ever since receiving my first AARP magazine at 50.  Available resources for you include a book (see below) and three free items (at right).
Over the decades, I have published 14 books. In retirement I have focused on  options and possibilities for older generations. It is one of the ways I continue growing in this rewarding stage of life.

Creative Aging: 52 Ways to Add Life to Your Years

Packed with helpful information and true stories, Creative Aging offers many ways for older adults to bloom and grow.  Based on thorough research and  personal experience, its 52 chapters will entertain, inspire, and  educate  you.  You will  find it useful and helpful for navigating the third stage of their lives. With wit and wisdom, it includes topics such as brain and body health, finding purpose, enjoying friendships, and resisting ageism. 

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Amazon

Order from
Amazon

Download free sample


Download a free multi-page guide:
"Improve Your Memory."

Join a  private Face Book group:
"Growing After 50."

Subscribe to Carol's newsletter,
"Notes from the Prairie. " It currently focuses on flourishing while aging: Free subscribers welcome.

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Carol Van Klompenburg

Presenter. . .

Carol Van Klompenburg has worked with words and stories for over four decades. (If you count her first-grade poetry prize, that duration is longer.) She has published fourteen books. The first of these was a nominee for the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award. Her articles, short stories, and poems have appeared in books and periodicals, as well as in her weekly columns in newspapers. She now focuses on older adult ussues.

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Writer. . .

I'm Carol. . .

Carol Van Klompenburg not only writes books; she also offers performances for Iowa churches, social groups, senior centers, clubs, sororities, gardening groups, and more. She has a master’s degree in theater arts and has crisscrossed Iowa as part of Firefly Productions, providing readers theater presentations sponsored by Humanities Iowa. 

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Order from
Amazon

Order from Amazon

Order from Amazon

Email Carol VK to order

CVK Books

   As older adults survey their belongings, they wonder what will happen to these possessions after they die. A World in a Grain of Sand offers fifty-two lively little stories about beloved belongings. These tales of treasures are both deeply personal and amazingly universal. They revel in beauty, celebrate friendships, and mourn loss. 

As retirees read Creative Aging, they chuckle and recognize themselves. When Carol retired, she discovered that, like many her age, she was in massive denial about her age. She launched a year-long, highly-read newspaper column to share her life and learning. Creative Aging is a collection of those delightful columns.

Growing up in  Iowa, Carol’s childhood memories are both funny and poignant. She guides readers through her tears in a school principal’s office and her terror that Jesus would return to earth as she watched her first-ever movie. Older adults from small Midwestern towns will identify with her and remember their own childhoods.

Whether you garden a lot, a little, or not at all, you will relish your forays into the garden alongside Carol Van Klompenburg. Using prose, poetry, and color pictures, she marvels at a butterfly, grumbles at chipmunks, makes war on weeds, and relishes the beauty of flowers. As she plays with words, she sheds light on both the inner and outer worlds of the gardening experience. (50 stories and poems, color photos, $20.00, shipping included. 

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Download free sample

Download free sample

Download free sample

Download free sample

What
Readers
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Pain and Pleasure of Flower Gardening Selections from Tending Beauty: Forty Moments in My Gardens, chosen based on group preferences.

What Audiences Say

Armchair Trips. Projected photos and narration for virtual trips. Especially for older groups in senior housing. who no longer travel.  Options: “Blue Danube,” “Bridges of Madison County,” “Eastern Iowa,” and “New England in the Fall.”

What Audiences Say

Widows Moving Forward. Stories of loss and of Hope, especially appropriate for gatherings of widows and widow support groups.

To learn more or Book an event,
Email Carol VK

To learn more or Book an event,
Email Carol VK

 A Christmas Collage. Stories about true Christmas events in the past, both disappointing  and joyful. Triumphant ending. Especially good for church groups. 

Stories of Stuff: Examples & How to Do It. From A World in a Grain of Sand: Lively Little Stories of Household Stuff. Chosen based on group preferences.

Benefits, Losses, Comedy and Stories of Aging.  Selections from  Creative Aging: 52 Ways to Add life to Your Years. Chosen based on group preferences.

Growing Up in Small-Town Iowa in the 1960s. From Child of the Plains: A Memoir, selections chosen based on group preferences.

CVK Presentations