Close Up Radio Spotlights Author Norma Royale Wilder

Santa Barbara CA – Norma Royale Wilder is the author of The Longer I Live The Wilder it Gets: A Memoir of Adventure. Wilder’s adventures have taken her around the world. All she has to do is close her eyes.

The book includes stories of Wilder’s experiences with an Argentinian smuggling operation, all-night parties in Spain, the war in Central America: a series of vignettes from a life well-lived.

The cover of The Longer I Live The Wilder it Gets is Wilder at age 20, hanging 300 feet above the rocks in Las Cruces, New Mexico training for the Peace Corps.

Now 75, Wilder reflects on the beginning of her adventure.

Wilder’s Peace Corps adventure would take her to Guatemala, where she specialized in community development.

“My whole life has been about community development,” says Wilder. “You're not just teaching words, you're teaching culture.”

When she returned to the states, Wilder became a Spanish teacher. She then moved to Venezuela where she taught for a year. Wilder would earn a master’s degree in Spanish and South American literature. She married a professor in Peru, and together they traveled all over South America, raising their family in Costa Rica, then Spain, until finally returning to Santa Barbara.

“I could always teach English and Spanish as second languages,” says Wilder. “That was my ticket!”

Every memoir is ultimately a meditation on memory, what it means to remember, why we remember some events and forget others. The Longer I Live The Wilder it Gets is no different.

The Longer I Live The Wilder it Gets: A Memoir of Adventure is available on Amazon