Elizabeth Rosner's Blog
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Jan.28.2013
“After leaving your show, I noticed only beauty.”
--comment in the guest book for “Layers of Being” (Estratos del Ser)
One of the highest purposes of art-making – perhaps its most essential – is to inspire viewers to...
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Nov.05.2012
I can still remember the election of 1968, even though I was eight years old at the time. I remember seeing crowds of young people on the TV news chanting "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote!" It shocked me to understand that they were talking about an injustice that even a child could...
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Dec.01.2011
I'm participating in my first Holiday Readathon, Dec. 2-4, inspired by author and blogger Liza Wiemer on Goodreads. For this mini-challenge/giveaway, readers are invited to respond to author questions, with prizes....
Here is mine:
"Begin Again" is a repeating line in my novel...
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Oct.01.2011
Today is October 1st, the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It is also the month in which my mother died of breast cancer 11 years ago, and undoubtedly marks the anniversary for countless others --- wives, sisters, mothers and friends --- who were lost to the disease.
I wrote...
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May.25.2011
The Swedes who knew my father after the war tell me he was lucky because he got out in time. I can't think what they mean at first until I realize they think he didn't survive what he survived, they think he didn't ever get sent to a camp, and I can't think why they think that until I realize...
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May.06.2011
Sending a virtual greeting card to my mother's ghost.... Posted today on myDaily.com! http://tinyurl.com/3pdr5wh. Happy Mother's Day to all of you too.
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Dec.09.2010
Mid-December 1975, and I was trapped in yet another honors English class with a teacher who had already bestowed lavish praise on my older sister’s perfect essays two years earlier. Apparently she was the writer in the family, and I was a mere second best, despite my own impressive grades and (...
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Aug.02.2010
My parents didn’t understand rhubarb, found artichokes incomprehensible. To my mother, every squash was yet another deplorable form of pumpkin; for my father, the world needed only to keep providing him with potato after potato. Having endured starvation of many flavors, you could say they had...
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Jul.21.2010
Twenty-five years ago, while an undergraduate at Stanford, I got a job on campus as a lifeguard, deepening a love of swimming and water that has lasted throughout my life. I took the duties seriously and studied the swimmers with professional vigilance, relieved at the end of each day that no...
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Jun.02.2010
For many of us, writing--not to mention publishing--may feel like a matter of life and death. In my case, the past two years have been a period of grappling quite literally with both, and winning two big prizes at once: my own restored health after breast cancer treatment, and the resurrection of...
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Dec.31.2009
Today is the last day of my 40s, and I’ll never be this young again. It’s the end of a decade that has included my happiest moments as well as my most pain-filled ones. Standing on the threshold of my 50th birthday, along with everyone else who is looking ahead as well as behind, I’m pausing to...
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Dec.26.2009
Let's start with a quick inventory: Can you remember the last time you looked into the eyes of a stranger? Not for romantic reasons but just to make a human connection, however momentary. Think elevators. Think long lines of women waiting to use the restroom at a concert.
Okay, what...
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Dec.11.2009
I grew up in a family of voices. Not because I had an especially large family (I am one of three children) but because our house was full of languages, full of the melodies and mysteries of other countries and cultures. Whenever I answered the phone, I expected to hear an accent on the other end...
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Dec.09.2009
Naked branches scratch
against a window.
Wet boots line up
by the door.
Beneath draped shawls,
mourners chant--
like old hypnotists
reading each other's minds.
Winter harmonies and
snowdrifts obscure
the moon.
Bluebirds fly
among the secrets of the...
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Nov.30.2009
Sometimes I forget that there is really only one story and that we are all either telling it or listening to it, the story that has loss or near-disaster somewhere in the beginning or middle, maybe it brings us to tears or to our knees, maybe we are overcome by a deluge of water or sorrow, maybe...
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Rosner's multilayered composition is rendered in beautiful, spare prose and will resonate long after the last page. ”
—Publisher's Weekly
About Elizabeth
Originally from upstate New York, Elizabeth Rosner is an award-winning novelist, poet and essayist now living in Berkeley, California. Her first novel, The Speed of Light, was published by Ballantine Books in 2001. The novel's central theme addresses...
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Elizabeth’s Favorite Books
To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; Underworld by Don DeLillo; The Sea by John Banville; Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje; Fugitive...