Sybil Rosen - Writer

Home  *  Books  *  Plays  *  Bio  *  Reviews  *  Contact - Links  *  Blaze
Sybil Rosen was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1950, a certifiable Jewish-American belle. She began writing poetry and short stories at age five, most memorably a tale about an Indian princess who runs away from her village. As she explained, "Her absence was missed by everyone."

After graduating as a theater major from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1972, she hit the road for five years, acting in dinner theater, summer stock, student films, and on the stage in Chicago. This diverse and itinerant period includes a 1977 nomination for Chicago’s Jefferson Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as an eight-month stint in a wall-less tree house in west Georgia with the man who would become Texas music legend Blaze Foley. His memory continues to inspire her.

Arriving in New York City at the age of twenty-nine, acting led almost immediately to playwriting, an experience she describes as "coming home." Since then she’s written numerous plays, screenplays, narration for documentary films, two musicals about menopause (though at fifty-eight she’s learned it’s nothing to sing about), a daytime soap opera, a novel and short story for young readers (both translated into German, the latter into Spanish, Catalan, and Slovene), a memoir, more poetry and many, many essays about nature, as well as theater reviews and assorted human interest pieces for various Hudson Valley magazines and newspapers. Her plays have been produced in New York City and upstate New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas, and also at New Jersey Rep, Harvard University, and Hampshire College. A ten-minute play, Duet for Bear and Dog, has had more than a hundred productions in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia, and one request to turn it into an opera.

To support her writing habit, she’s worked as a chambermaid, housecleaner, waitress of many cuisines, gas station attendant, florist, janitor, survey-taker, proofreader, editor, environmental educator, and preserve seasonal ranger.

A move to the upstate New York countryside in the early 1990s coincided with a blossoming interest in Buddhism. In 1997 she became a student of John Daido Loori, Roshi, joining the ranks of Jewish-American Buddhists affectionately known as JuBu’s.

Since the 1999 publication of Speed of Light, an award-winning novel for young readers, Rosen continues to go into classrooms around the country, talking to kids from kindergarteners to high school students about the joys and perils of a writing life. Answering questions like, "Where do characters come from?" "How do you know when a story is finished?" and "What do you like to color with?"

In 2002 she embarked on an unexpected odyssey from upstate New York to Georgia to Texas in pursuit of Blaze Foley’s memory. Uprooting herself, she moved back to Georgia, a journey that resulted in a memoir. Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley was published by the University of North Texas Press in November 2008, the second offering in their new series, "Lives of Musicians." Since its release, she has been doing readings and signings from the deep south out to Colorado, from Louisiana and Texas to New York. In Austin, TX she participated in South By Southwest and the Texas Book Festival. In NYC, she read at a Blaze Foley Tribute at Banjo Jim’s in New York City, a stellar event created by singer/songwriter Elena Skye of the Demolition String Band.

Several of her earlier plays have been resurrected. Last of the Speckled Catfish (originally written for Actors & Writers in Olivebridge, New York) was a finalist in the 2008 National Ten-Minute Play Contest. The play will be read in the New Plays Festival at SUNY-New Paltz, April 8 - 10, 2011. Reuben & Son (a one-act originally produced at Circle Repertory and directed by Ira Wohl) was revived at The Co-op of The Pacific Resident Theater (directed by Steven Burnett) in 2005. Companion pieces Yetta and Y followed, now comprising a three-act play, Life After Death which will receive a production at The Broach Theatre in Greensboro, North Carolina, in November 2009 directed by Michael Lilly.

Honors include: