Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Inevitable and Only
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://hyacinthsnbiscuits.wordpress.com/
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Agent: Linda Epstein, Emerald City Literary Agency: linda@emeraldcityliterary.com https://www.bu.edu/today/2017/lisa-rosinsky-writer-in-residence/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Johns Hopkins University, B.A.; Boston University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, translator, poet, editor, educator, and children’s author. Barefoot Books, Cambridge, MA, editor of children’s books. Boston University, Robert Pinsky Teaching Fellow, 2015; Boston Arts Academy, teaching artist. Has worked as a yoga instructor and as a traveling performer.
AWARDS:Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence, 2016-17.
WRITINGS
Contributor of poetry to periodicals and journals, including Prairie Schooner, Hunger Mountain, Cimarron Review, Baltimore Review, Measure, and Iron Horse Literary Review. Author of a blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Lisa Rosinsky is a writer, poet, translator, and editor. She works in the publishing industry as a children’s book editor for Barefoot Books, a publisher based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She also acts as a translator for foreign-language children’s books published by Barefoot Books, such as I’m the Best! and Can’t Catch Me! by Constanze V. Kitzing, Jojo and the Food Fight! by Didier Levy, and Cloud Chaser by Anne-Fleur Dillon. Rosinsky has also been a yoga instructor and half of a two-person traveling show of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, noted a writer on the website Strange Horizons. Rosinsky holds a B.A. in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and an M.F.A. from Boston University.
Rosinsky’s debut novel is Inevitable and Only, a fifteen-year-old girl discovers a life-changing secret from her father’s past. Cadie is the daughter of a Latina mother and a Caucasian father. She has a strong and loving relationship with her father, and she trusts him completely. She spends more time with him since her mother is deeply involved in her younger brother’s life as a musical prodigy.
Cadie’s comfortable life is upended when Elizabeth, a teen a few months older than her, comes to live with the family. Elizabeth, she discovers, is her half-sister, and the product of an affair that her father had before she was born. She is upset to discover that Elizabeth is being accepted into the family and that she is proof of her father’s cheating past. Soon, she begins to wonder if he has other secrets, and her trust in him starts to erode.
When Elizabeth arrives, she doesn’t seem all that bad to Cadie, but the damage to the family’s foundation has already been done. It doesn’t take long, however, for her initial impression of her half-sister to change. Elizabeth begins to take over Cadie’s place in the family, which spurs Cadie to seek distraction in her school’s drama club. When Elizabeth tries to steal the boy she’s interested in, her costar in an upcoming production, Cadie is even more convinced that Elizabeth isn’t the person she tries to make everybody believe she is. “Rosinky’s debut offers up an extremely diverse cast of characters who interact with vivacity and authentic emotion,” commented a Kirkus Reviews writer.
In an interview on the website Kidlit 411, Rosinsky offered some unique advice for aspiring writers. “Read widely in the age group you want to write for. Read books you love and books you hate. And when you don’t like a book, keep reading it, and figure out what you don’t like about it and how you would write it differently. The books you don’t like can be the most valuable learning tools,” she stated in the interview.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Boston Globe, September 19, 2016, Eryn Carlson, “Lisa Rosinsky Brings a Fresh Perspective to Her Work—And the BPL,” profile of Lisa Rosinsky.
Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2017, review of Inevitable and Only.
School Library Journal, August, 2017, Sabrina Carnesi, review of Inevitable and Only, p. 106.
ONLINE
Baltimore Review, http://www.baltimorereview.org/ (May 7, 2018), biography of Lisa Rosinsky.
Boston University Website, http://www.bu.edu/ (February 23, 2017), John O’Rourke, “A Room of Her Own,” profile of Lisa Rosinsky.
Kitlit 411, http://www.kidlit411.com/ (October 20, 2017), interview with Lisa Rosinsky.
Lisa Rosinsky Website, http://www.lisarosinskywrites.com (May 7, 2018).
Strange Horizons, http://www.strangehorizons.com/ (May 7, 2018), biography of Lisa Rosinsky.
That Artsy Reader Girl, http://www.thatartsyreadergirl.com/ (October 8, 2017), interview with Lisa Rosinsky.
isa Rosinsky
Poetry
Lisa Rosinsky is the 2016-2017 Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence. Her poetry appears in Measure, Prairie Schooner, Hunger Mountain, Iron Horse Literary Review, and various other journals. She holds a BA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and is finishing her MFA in creative writing from Boston University. Her first novel, Inevitable & Only, will be published by Boyds Mills Press in Fall 2017. A Maryland native, she is thrilled to have this poem included in the Baltimore Review.
Lisa writes poetry and young adult fiction. She has been an editor, a yoga teacher, and half of a two-person traveling production of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Her poetry appears in Prairie Schooner, Measure, Hunger Mountain, and other journals. She is pursuing her MFA at Boston University.
Author Spotlight: Lisa Rosinsky
October 20, 2017
We are thrilled to present LISA ROSINSKY, author of the YA INEVITABLE AND ONLY (Boyds Mills Press) in the spotlight today! INEVITABLE AND ONLY has been named one of Barnes & Noble Teen's Most Anticipated Indie YAs of 2017!
Be sure to enter the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win a copy of INEVITABLE AND ONLY!
Welcome, Lisa!
Tell us about your background and how you came to write for children.
I started writing my first novel in a marble notebook in fourth grade, and finished it three years later. I figured that was it--I had conquered fiction!--and promptly moved on to poetry. For the next ten years, I only wrote poems.
Then I landed my first internship in publishing, at Highlights magazine, and rediscovered my love of children's literature. That inspired me to start writing fiction again. (P.S. I found that old marble notebook recently and reread it. My handwriting got lots better as the story went on! The plot, however, did not.)
What inspired your book, Inevitable and Only?
Inevitable and Only is about three of my favorite things--sisters, secrets, and Shakespeare.
I've always wanted an older brother. I even invented one in sixth grade, and all my friends thought he was real, until the stories I told about him got too ridiculously far-fetched. But I never forgot that idea of a secret sibling, and I love family dramas.
One night, on a long drive (I always get my best ideas on middle-of-the-night drives or in the shower), the name Acadia popped into my head. I started wondering about her . . . why did she have that unusual name? What was her story? I gave her an artsy, Jewish, close-knit family like the one I grew up in--plus, that secret sibling I'd always wanted--and the story started to unfold from there.
Was your road to publication long and winding, short and fortuitous, or something in between?
Probably something in between--unless you're counting all the way from fourth grade, which is when I first decided I wanted to be an author!
I wrote Inevitable and Only as a NaNoWriMo project in 2014, signed with my agent in the spring of 2015, and she sold the book in 2016.
What projects are you working on now?
I'm working on another contemporary YA novel, and about a zillion ideas for other novels...plus a bunch of poems...and maybe even a novel in verse!
What is the hardest part about writing YA books?
I don't know if there's anything harder about writing YA than writing fiction in general. Since I considered myself only a poet for so long, it's still somewhat miraculous to me that I can write anything longer than seven inches! For a while when I first started writing fiction, it was all just plot-less prose poetry.
What is the easiest?
Is there anything easy about writing??? Maybe remembering what it was like to be a young adult. Those memories are incredibly vivid for me--the intensity of all my feelings. The process of discovering who I was outside of my family, who I wanted to be in the wider world. Those are memories and experiences I'll never get tired of exploring.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
First of all--read! Read widely in the age group you want to write for. Read books you love and books you hate. And when you don't like a book, keep reading it, and figure out what you don't like about it and how you would write it differently. The books you don't like can be the most valuable learning tools.
Second, find other children's authors near you. Go to their events and read their books and get to know them. In my experience, the children's writers' community is incredibly close-knit and supportive.
What is one thing most people don't know about you?
Once upon a time, I was an actress with a traveling children's theater. My favorite role was playing half of a two-person production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Where can people find you online?
website: WWW.LISAROSINSKYWRITES.COM
Twitter: @LISAROSINSKY
Facebook: HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LISAROSINSKYAUTHOR
Lisa Rosinsky is a poet, editor, novelist, and teacher. She was the 2016-2017 Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence, and holds a BA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in creative writing from Boston University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, Measure, 32 Poems, The Baltimore Review, and other journals. Lisa is a senior editor at Barefoot Books in Cambridge, MA. INEVITABLE AND ONLY is her first novel.
Lisa Rosinsky brings a fresh perspective to her work — and the BPL
3
Lisa Rosinsky is this year’s Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence.
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
Lisa Rosinsky is this year’s Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence.
By Eryn Carlson GLOBE CORRESPONDENT SEPTEMBER 19, 2016
For so many writers, the path to success is circuitous. Some fall into a writing career inadvertently, while others who long work to “make it,” get discouraged by rejection, writer’s block, or the punishing publishing industry.
Not so for Lisa Rosinsky. With the exception of a stint as a premed student, Rosinsky, 28, has been steadily working toward becoming a writer since fourth grade, when she went well beyond the parameters of a simple assignment. When her teacher in Clarksville, Md., asked the class to write short stories based on images from a picture book, Rosinsky filled a whole composition book. And she didn’t stop there.
“I went on to write six other chapters and an epilogue, which took me until the end of sixth grade. It was a couple hundred pages all typed up,” said Rosinsky, who lives in Jamaica Plain.
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Coincidentally, she recently heard from that teacher for the first time since elementary school, and had two huge announcements to share. In the same week in June, she’d learned that her debut young adult novel, “Inevitable and Only,” would be published by Boyds Mills Press in 2018. She’d also been selected as this year’s Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence, a nine-month fellowship for emerging children’s or young adult authors that comes with office space at the library in Copley Square and a $20,000 stipend.
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News about Rosinsky’s book — about a teenage girl who finds out her father has another child who is coming to live with them — came first. When a few days later she got the call from Associates board member Alan Andres that she would be the 13th Writer-in-Residence, Rosinsky said she felt as if her heart stopped. “It was like, ‘This cannot be happening at the same time; there’s just no way.”
A panel of authors, librarians, and other publishing professionals selected Rosinsky for the position based on the strength of her proposal for the YA novel “Robin and Mariana,” which she describes as a “queer, modern-day ‘Robin Hood’ retelling about privilege, social justice, and survival.” As a self-described queer author and lifelong “Robin Hood” fan drawn to fairytale and myth retellings, Rosinsky has always wanted to retell the legend as a story between two girls — Robin and Mariana. There’s something particularly powerful, she said, in LGBTQ retellings of traditional tales.
“It says that even though society is still for some reason trying to wrap its head around [the fact] that all people deserve respect and basic human rights, queer people aren’t a modern invention,” said Rosinsky. “We’ve been around throughout history and therefore have the right to claim these traditional tales and these legendary love stories.”
The library’s writer-in-residence program has launched the careers of an impressive list of writers since 2004. Could Lisa Rosinky be next?
DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF
The library’s writer-in-residence program has launched the careers of an impressive list of writers since 2004. Could Lisa Rosinky be next?
Rosinsky is well prepared to take on the task of writing another novel. She studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and made her way to the Bay State to work on her MFA in poetry at Boston University in 2015. Now working as an editor at Barefoot Books in Cambridge, she continues to write, penning poetry, short stories for children, and “Inevitable and Only,” which she wrote while working at the children’s magazine Highlights after college.
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She applied to the Writer-in-Residence program largely as motivation to get her started on “Robin and Mariana.” Though she thought it would be a long shot, she believed the process of putting the application proposal together would “give [me] a good kick in the butt to get started.”
In the book, Robin and Mariana meet a number of homeless youths not so unlike Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men. The characters grapple with issues of prejudice and oppression related to gender, sexual orientation, race, and class. Knowing she wanted to explore these intersectional social identities as well as the subject of youth homelessness, which is particularly prevalent for LGBTQ teens, Rosinsky thought “Robin Hood” was the perfect — and timely — vehicle to tell that story.
“The canonical tale concerns privilege, social justice, idealism, law enforcement, gender equality, and wealth distribution — topics at the core of the current news cycle and highly relevant to today’s teens,” Rosinsky wrote in her proposal. “These issues won’t fade away anytime soon, and YA readers will connect the dots between the characters in ‘Robin and Mariana’ and the issues affecting real people in the world around them.”
Anita Silvey, author of “Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children’s Book” and a judge for the Writer-in-Residence fellowship, said she was left wanting more after reading Rosinsky’s proposal and first chapter.
“ ‘Robin and Mariana’ had two important components: interesting characters and the possibilities of a road trip,” she said. “My only sorrow as a judge was that I wanted to read what happened next. I eagerly await seeing the final book.”
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Supported by the Associates of the Boston Public Library, an independent nonprofit dedicated to preserving the library’s special collections of rare books and other items of literary and historic importance, the Writer-in-Residence program is underwritten by an anonymous donor. It has launched the careers of an impressive list of writers since 2004. Elaine Dimopoulos, Hannah Barnaby, Anna Staniszewski, Annie Hartnett, and Natalie Anderson are among former fellows who have titles that are forthcoming or were published in recent years.
“It’s just such an honor and validation to have a committee of people read your work and say, ‘Yeah, this could turn into a book,’ ” said Rosinsky. “I’m so honored to be joining the ranks of those who have done this before me.”
Eryn Carlson can be reached at eryn.carlson@gmail.com.
Lisa Rosinsky was selected as the 2016-2017 Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence. Once upon a time, she was half of a two-person traveling production of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe–which was almost as fun as her current job, Senior Editor at Barefoot Books.
Lisa has an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where she was a 2016 Robert Pinsky Teaching Fellow and a teaching artist at the Boston Arts Academy. She writes poems about love, God, and dinosaurs that have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, Measure, 32 Poems, Hunger Mountain, The Baltimore Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and other journals. Her debut young adult novel is Inevitable and Only.
Q: What do you write?
A: YA novels and poems – or poems that turn into novels – or novels full of poems. Also, picture books!
Q: Where are you from?
A: I grew up in suburban Maryland, then moved to Baltimore, rural Pennsylvania, Washington DC, back to rural Pennsylvania, and finally ended up in Boston.
Q: What’s your favorite book?
A: That’s like asking someone to pick their favorite kid! But since I don’t have any kids and I do have a zillion books…A Wrinkle in Time. And Harriet the Spy. And Fangirl. And A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And…oops.
Q: What is your favorite font?
A: Baskerville.
Q: What is your favorite punctuation mark?
A: The ampersand. I once told that to an auditorium of 400 students. I left that school with a shiny silver ampersand. So now I officially have an Ampersand Collection (which will also be the name of my indie folk band).
Q: What’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to you as an author?
A: On a different school visit, I was supposed to meet with students in small groups in the school library. As I waited, someone came onto the PA system and made a very loud announcement: “All students: there is now AN AUTHOR in the library. If you would like to meet THE AUTHOR, come to the library. REPEAT: THE AUTHOR. IS IN. THE LIBRARY.” I could not have written that scene better myself.
Q: It sounds like you enjoy school visits! Will you come visit my school/bookstore/book club?
A: I’d love to! Reach out via my contact page with details.
The Debut Dish: Lisa Rosinsky & Gwen C. Katz (+ Giveaway)
October 8, 2017 Jana Author Interview, Debut Author Challenge, Debut Dish, Giveaway 4
The Debut Dish, a bi-monthly Debut Author Challenge feature, is where you go for the scoop on some pretty awesome debut authors and their new books! Hopefully these interviews will inspire you to add many, many more books to your to-read list. Because, really, who doesn’t need more books in their lives?
This issue of The Debut Dish features Lisa Rosinsky (Inevitable and Only) and Gwen Katz (Among the Red Stars).
Inevitable and Only by Lisa Rosinsky
October 10, 2017 from Boyds Mills Press
Add to Goodreads | Author Website
What if you suddenly found out you had a sister . . . and she took over your life?Cadie is close to her father. They are so much alike—same temperament, sense of humor, and love for the theater—and Dad always knows how to comfort her . . . until the day he announces that he has another daughter. Suddenly, Cadie has a sister, Elizabeth—a sister who is six months older than her, a sister who is about to move in with them, a sister whose very existence means that Cadie’s beloved father cheated on her mother when they were already married. What other secrets might he have? Can she still trust him? Does Cadie really know her father at all? And when Elizabeth arrives, Cadie’s worst fears come true. Elizabeth looks just like Dad; not only that, she seems all too perfect. Until she begins stealing Cadie’s place in the family and even Cadie’s one true love . . . But Elizabeth has secrets of her own. This deeply emotional coming-of-age story explores the choices you make when your family—and your life—changes overnight. Are these choices the inevitable and only ones? And will they ultimately bring your family back together or push you further apart?
Describe your book in five words or less.
Secrets, sisters, and Shakespeare.
Tell us about your favorite scene in your book.
This is tough! I loved writing the scene where my main character, Acadia, starts falling for her co-star during auditions for her high school production of Much Ado About Nothing (though she doesn’t realize it yet). They have instant chemistry onstage while speaking Beatrice and Benedick’s lines. I’m a huge Shakespeare and theater nerd, and that scene just wrote itself!
Where were you when you found out you were being published?
Sitting outside a coffee shop on a beautiful warm day in June, about to go teach a creative writing class at Boston University. I couldn’t tell my students that same night because it was still confidential–hardest secret I’ve ever had to keep!
What’s your favorite junk food?
Berger cookies–a Baltimore specialty. It’s a thin, soft vanilla cookie hiding under a whopping helping of fudge.
What’s the oddest thing on your desk right now?
A large hyacinth plant named Helga and a tiny succulent named Sharon. Look, I get lonely when I write, and I need someone to tell all my terrible jokes to!
A Room of Her Own
Alum chosen Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence
Lisa Rosinsky inside Boston Public Library
Lisa Rosinsky (GRS’17), this year’s Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence, is using her nine-month paid fellowship to complete an LGBTQ retelling of the Robin Hood legend, Robin and Mariana.
02.23.2017By John O’Rourke. Photos by Cydney Scott
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Lisa Rosinsky has been scribbling in notebooks as long as she can remember. Growing up in suburban Baltimore, she was filling marble composition books with poems and illustrations by age six. As a fourth grader, she was assigned to write a short story based on a picture in a book. With her teacher’s encouragement, she wound up turning it into a novel, taking two years to complete the project.
“That was when I figured out that maybe I wanted to be a writer,” Rosinsky (GRS’17) says.
At 28, she has achieved that goal. After earning a BA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins (after a short foray as a premed student) and an MFA from BU (the Creative Writing Program), her debut young adult (YA) novel, Inevitable and Only, is set to be published this fall. The idea for the story—about a 15-year-old girl who finds out that her father has another daughter who is coming to live with them—came to Rosinsky one night while she was driving on a long car trip. “I usually get my best ideas when I’m either behind the wheel or in the shower,” she says.
The plotline had its genesis in her childhood. She made up an older brother when she was 12 and for months convinced friends of his existence. “I tricked them for a very long time,” Rosinsky says. The older of two girls, she had long pondered what it would be like to have an older sibling. When the idea came to her, she put her “ancient clunky android phone” on voice record and dictated the plot while she drove.
Last spring, Rosinsky was mulling over an idea for a second YA novel—an LGBTQ retelling of the Robin Hood legend—when she learned about the Writer-in-Residence program run by the Associates of the Boston Public Library, an independent nonprofit dedicated to conserving and digitizing the library’s special collections of rare books and manuscripts. The nine-month residency, funded by an anonymous donor, began in 2004 to help foster the careers of young children’s book authors. It has been a springboard for several writers, including Hannah Barnaby (Wonder Snow), Elaine Dimopoulos (Material Girls), Nathalie Anderson (the just-released City of Saints and Thieves, which has been optioned for a movie), and Annie Hartnett (the upcoming Rabbit Cake). The program, which annually provides one writer with a $20,000 stipend and a room to write in at the BPL in Copley Square, attracts hundreds of applicants.
Lisa Rosinsky reading from podium to room
The Associates of the Boston Public Library hosted a Writer-in-Residence reception last September at the BPL’s Abbey Room, where Rosinsky read from her work. Photo courtesy of the Associates of the Boston Public Library
Rosinsky heard about the fellowship at a Simmons College symposium, where Dimopoulos spoke. She decided to apply “kind of as a kick in the butt,” she says, to get herself started on the retelling of the Robin Hood saga, titled Robin and Mariana. So she wrote up a synopsis and a sample chapter, trying to capture the voices of her two main characters, Robin Chen, a slam poet from Baltimore, and Mariana, a sci-fi nerd from Berkeley, who meet online, fall in love, and take a road trip halfway across the country, to meet up in Nebraska.
As a child and a teenager, Rosinsky says, she was captivated by fables, fairy tales, and myths, especially the stories of Robin Hood and Peter Pan. “Those were my two favorites, kind of the outlaw and the never-wants-to-grow-up figure.” As much as she loved those stories, though, she couldn’t identify with them completely. “For me, personally, as a kid who was still figuring out that I was bisexual, I didn’t see bisexual people represented in anything I read,” she says. In the rare instances where there was an LGBTQ character, “they never had happy endings.”
“I do feel a huge responsibility to write characters that kids can look at as examples of ways to be who they are with dignity and respect,” she says. “For kids to read those stories recast through the lens of queer characters, or at least with the possibility that you don’t have to interpret these tales in the heteronormative way they’ve always been told, is incredibly powerful.”
That said, she’s quick to note that she’s not writing for an exclusively LGBTQ audience. “I think that it’s just as important for straight readers to read about kids who are just like them except that they happen to be attracted to different people or they express their gender differently. This is something I didn’t see as a kid, and now as a 20-something, I wish I could go rewind that and give myself a redo.”
Plotting adventures with road maps and a diary
The road trip the book’s two characters take is based on a trip Rosinsky took with a close friend from home who was moving to Berkeley when they were about 20. Road maps charting their cross-country course are on the wall in her BPL office, and she refers to them in plotting Robin and Mariana’s adventures. She’s also using a diary she kept during the trip.
The two lead characters in Robin and Mariana befriend a number of LGBTQ teens living on the streets (an estimated 40 percent of the nation’s homeless youth identify as LGBTQ) and decide to start a community for them—think Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men. In the course of her research for the book, Rosinsky talked to many local case workers and homeless advocates working with LGBTQ teens. “It turns out there are a huge number of shelters and a lot of resources for homeless teens here in the Boston area,” she says. “I’ve been really lucky to connect with some great people who are helping me out.”
The book is not just a road trip novel, she says, but a story about crime, poetry, and true love. It weaves together issues that resonate with young readers: class, race, poverty, sexual identity, and gender equality.
“She has a fresh, clear, yet poignant way with language and life’s complex issues,” says David Leonard, president of the BPL. “Situating the struggles of life in the life of a relatable fictionalized character makes them all more accessible and understandable.”
Rosinsky says she’s drawing on her experience as a BU grad student to help craft Robin and Mariana. In addition to teaching undergrads, last year she taught a creative writing seminar for high schoolers at Boston Arts Academy, where she became aware of the spell of slam and performance poetry on young people—and that’s been invaluable in creating Robin. Rosinsky is an accomplished poet, but has found attempting slam poetry for the first time exhilarating. While vastly different from the poetry she wrote for classes and her master’s thesis, she feels it is important to give her readers a sense of how slam poetry can be an agent of social change.
Lisa Rosinsky inside Boston Public Library
Rosinsky, who receives a $20,000 stipend and office space at the BPL as part of her fellowship, spends weeknights and Saturdays writing at the library while working full-time as an editor of children’s books at Barefoot Books in Cambridge.
When the Associates of the Boston Public Library panel of judges—comprising children’s book authors, editors, and librarians—read Rosinsky’s submission for the fellowship program, they were so impressed that they unanimously voted her the 13th Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence.
“The distinctive voices of the characters in her proposal were both memorable and alive,” says Alan Andres, an Associates of the Boston Public Library board member and a former editor at Houghton Mifflin.
“After hearing Lisa read an excerpt from Robin and Mariana, my reaction was: this is great,” says Vivian Spiro, chairman of the board of the Associates of the Boston Public Library. “She is definitely the right person for the job.”
For Rosinsky, winning the fellowship has been life-changing. “Having a vote of confidence like this changes the way you think about your work,” she says. “It makes you think this is not just something that I do because I believe in it—I’m doing it because a community of people out there want to read it, and that’s really exciting.”
Word of the residency coincided with two other significant turns in Rosinsky’s life: she landed a job as a children’s book editor (her dream job, she says) with Barefoot Books in Cambridge, and at the same time received word from Boyds Mill Press that it planned to publish Inevitable and Only. Since starting the residency last September, she has worked a grueling schedule, spending days at her editing job and nights and weekends at the BPL, where she has already completed several chapters of the new book. (Fellows are expected to complete a “submission-ready” manuscript by the end of their residency in May.)
The author says she’s drawn to writing for teenagers both because of the challenge it poses and the satisfaction it provides.
“You have to grab them right away and then you need to give them a reason to keep reading and not put the book down, which is excellent training as a writer,” she says. “You can’t have a slack plot. It’s got to be paced just right. And I don’t think you have to write down for kids. I want kids to feel like they can relate to what I’m writing.”
What informs all of Rosinsky’s writing is the belief that literature has the power to make a tangible difference in young readers’ lives.
“Kids 12 and up are still figuring out who they are and who they want to be, and that’s a really exciting time,” she says. “Books were what shaped me at that age, and I think that as a writer, you have a tremendous power and responsibility to help kids figure those things out. I want kids to think that there’s a world in stories that they can escape to, and that by reading about them they can explore parts of themselves that maybe they’re not comfortable exploring in their own lives yet.”
Applications for the 2017–2018 Associates of the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence program will be available online soon at www.writer-in-residence.org.
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Rosinsky, Lisa: INEVITABLE AND ONLY
Kirkus Reviews. (July 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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Rosinsky, Lisa INEVITABLE AND ONLY Boyds Mills (Children's Fiction) $17.95 10, 10 ISBN: 978-1-62979-817-2
What would you do if you suddenly discovered you had a half sister and she's only a few months older than you?Cadie's life is pretty great. Sure, the mixed-race teen's relationship with her Latina mother could be better, but Cadie and her white dad get along well, and her mom is busy with her little brother, a cello genius, anyway. But when Elizabeth, a white girl who is just a few months older than Cadie, comes to live with the family, relationships start to deteriorate pretty quickly. For one thing, Elizabeth is the outcome of her dad's past infidelity. Plus she goes to church every week, unlike the rest of the family, who fall along the "free-spirited hippie" end of the spiritual spectrum. Also, Cadie's longtime crush finds Elizabeth quite charming. Can Cadie find distraction and solace in her friends, her drama class, and her new potential flame? Rosinky's debut offers up an extremely diverse cast of characters who interact with vivacity and authentic emotion. A backdrop of theater quotes and scenes, including a healthy dose of Shakespeare, gives the story a sweet connection to the acting world without feeling unnatural or overbearing. A complex tangle of plotlines finally resolves itself in a neat package, perhaps a bit too neat, but that's a small nit to pick. An excellent read. (Fiction. 14-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rosinsky, Lisa: INEVITABLE AND ONLY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498345076/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aedac92b. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498345076
Rosinsky, Lisa. Inevitable and Only
Sabrina Carnesi
School Library Journal. 63.8 (Aug. 2017): p106.
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Full Text:
ROSINSKY, Lisa. Inevitable and Only. 272p. Boyds Mills. Oct. 2017. Tr $17.95. ISBN 9781629798172.
Gr 9 Up--Cadie, 15, has always looked to her father, who helped her develop a love for the theater, as the one person she can always trust to be there for her. As of late her mom, who is also the principal of the Friends school she and her 10-year-old brother Josh attend, hasn't been. She's been spending more time catering to Josh's future as a concert cellist than to anyone else's needs in the family, and Cadie can't remember the last time her parents have both spent time with each other or with the whole family. The ties that bind have been taut, and when the family finds out about Elizabeth, her dad's unknown daughter, the strings are almost torn to shreds. To avoid conflict, Cadie finds solace in the school's drama club. When she lands a lead role in the latest production opposite the tall, dark, and mysteriously handsome Zephyr, she is elated but not prepared for the strength of her attraction. Even more surprising are her thoughts of how the staged kiss they share in one scene, should be more than staged. Agnosticism, Ahimsa, and atheism are addressed in a nonbiased and balanced manner, as are discussions of LGBTQ issues, interracial marriage and dating, and biracial children. The overabundance of topics covered, however, leaves little room to fully submerge readers, and the exploration remains surface level. VERDICT Recommended for large YA collections.--Sabrina Carnesi, Crittenden Middle School, Newport News, VA
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Carnesi, Sabrina. "Rosinsky, Lisa. Inevitable and Only." School Library Journal, Aug. 2017, p. 106. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499597918/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cd0f1ba5. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499597918