Renata and Tim Louwers co-founded Months To Years as a nonprofit in 2017 and published the first issue in early 2018. They are based in San Francisco but spend time each year in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
Renata and Tim married in 2016 after knowing each other for many years and after each lost a first spouse. Renata lost her husband, Ahmad, in 2014 to metastatic bladder cancer. Tim lost his first wife Barbara, also in 2014, to early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 50. In addition to the isolation of living through the terminal illness of a spouse, they recognized how isolating it is to lose a spouse at a “younger” age. Similarly-aged people simply didn’t relate to the experience. These experiences inspired them both to write and speak about terminal illness, end-of-life decisions, and mortality.
renata Louwers
Renata is a writer and the editor of Months To Years. Her essays have been published in the anthology My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2020); the Philadelphia Inquirer; STATnews.com; Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and the Stanford Scope medical blog. Her work was shortlisted for the 2025 Paul Kalanithi Writing Award. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto. She has worked as a bladder cancer patient advocate and speaker. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Boston University and a Master of Public Administration from Louisiana State University. She worked as a newspaper reporter early in her career. She is also a CPA (inactive), a former Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), and a former Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).
After a career in public sector performance auditing in several major cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, she refocused her attention on writing. In 2021, she earned a Creative Writing Certificate from UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She served as a founding nonfiction editor of Southland Alibi, the program’s literary journal. She earned a certificate of professional achievement from Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program. in 2023. She leads online grief-writing groups for Months To Years based on techniques drawn from narrative medicine practices and leads Months To Years‘ effort to build a creative writing community on Substack.
She has attended yoga classes in languages she doesn’t speak, is a dual Italian citizen, loves creating meals with fresh grown herbs, and is always up for swim when on a Hawaiian beach. She is a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and relishes her longtime home of San Francisco.
TIM LOUWERS
Tim serves as Months To Years’ Chief Operating Officer (COO). Professor Emeritus at James Madison University, he retired in 2017 as the Director of the School of Accounting. He has a Ph.D. in Accounting from Florida State University. He is a retired Certified Public Accountant and co-author of a bestselling textbook on auditing as well as numerous academic articles about forensic accounting and ethics in the accounting profession.
After raising more than $30,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association in the years following Barbara’s death, he is currently writing a memoir about her struggle with the disease. Inspired to help others find peace and beauty in death, Tim’s focus is on identifying resources to help younger spouses of the terminally ill.
Tim relishes his status as an above average chess and poker player. He apprenticed with a chef in a French restaurant, has traveled extensively and has rated more than 3,500 movies on Netflix. He is a proud Detroit native and delights in finding Vernor’s ginger ale in unexpected locales.
Barbara LaBounta
Barbara serves as the Design Director and Photo Editor for Months To Years and has been with the team since the beginning. Her career spans many decades and disciplines including publishing, broadcast television, video post-production, feature animation and education. Major credits of note include Saturday Night Live, Toy Story, and Shrek.
She has also spent many hours on stage as an actor, dancer and singer in New York City (born and bred), Atlanta, Vancouver, and San Francisco and now, Minneapolis.
Happily married to her wonderful husband of 38 years, Barbara is the proud mother identical twin daughters and doting rescue mom to a chocolate Labrador retriever. She is also a chef on a specialized food experience team at a local artisanal supermarket.
Michelle DeLiso
Michelle DeLiso serves as Copyeditor and Proofreader for Months To Years. Her work has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Drunk Monkeys, and several consumer magazines.
After earning a master’s degree in library service, Michelle served as a reference librarian before transitioning to publishing, where she worked for many years as a research editor for national magazines.
Her favorite literary sandbox is creative nonfiction. It is the genre she most enjoys writing, reading, and editing.
Once a longtime resident of New Jersey, she recently relocated to North Carolina with her husband and two sons. She loves spying on hummingbirds, listening for coyotes at dusk, and the Oxford comma.
Joseph Paulson
At two years old, Joseph Paulson whispered, “Moon like half a ball,” into his mother’s ear. His first poem on record!
At 18, he felt obligated to choose one of two creative careers and did not choose poetry. Having an artistic outlet other than writing, successfully kept his psyche from complete atrophy.
However, some years later Joseph realized that “either/or” framing had resulted in the neglect of a critical part of his being. He returned to poetry as vocation. Though he hasn’t “quit his day job,” in fact he’s added one or two, poetry is his primary artistic concern these days.
Joseph’s poetic life and abilities have been enhanced by participating in numerous workshops with critically acclaimed poets. He enjoyed succeeding Estella Ramirez as facilitator of the Viva Poets! Workshop at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California.
He currently teaches poetry appreciation and composition at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center as a core member of their I_AM (Institute for Arts in Medicine) program. He is honored to be the poetry editor for Months to Years, and looks forward to bringing readers incredible work.