Elizabeth Rosner

Author photo by Judy Dater

Elizabeth Rosner is a bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist living in Berkeley, California. Her newest book of non-fiction, SURVIVOR CAFÉ: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in The New York Times; it was also a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her three acclaimed novels have been translated into nine languages and have received prizes in the US and in Europe. A graduate of Stanford University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Queensland in Australia, she lectures and teaches writing workshops internationally. 

Twitter: @elizabethrosner

Instagram: @elizrosner

Favorite non-reading activity?

I’d say it’s a toss-up between swimming and singing. Swimming: because it’s where my body feels most at home, as if I am essentially a water creature rather than a land-based one. Also, because I love to experience the kind of physical buoyancy that somehow affects my mental and emotional state. When I’m doing laps in a pool (for example) my breathing goes deep and steady; my mind goes quiet and free. Singing: because I love the surprising resonance of what pours out of me when I release my inhibitions. Also, because music truly is the universal language and everyone seems to understand each other from heart to heart. Singing effortlessly connects me with myself and with others, past and present.

Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?

Although I often find cities fascinating and exciting, pretty soon I end up with claustrophobia and over-stimulation: too many people, too much noise, not enough green and blue (as in, trees and sky and water). To feel truly at rest, I need vast stretches of open space and silence, or at least the organic sounds of wind, waves, birdsong. Goats and sheep? Fine. The occasional barking dog, chasing a stick? Also good. If you insist on the dazzle of architecture and cobblestones and opera and fashion, I can see your point. But if I have to choose between urban and wilderness, I will always choose the latter. Maybe the west coast of Ireland (for example), or the shores of Lake Superior. Best choice of all? Islands with no cars. Where everything slows all the way down, including my nervous system. Where my imagination floats.

Is there another profession you would like to try?

See my answer to “favorite non-reading activity.” I am still fantasizing about being a professional singer, with my own band. Is it too late yet? Please tell me it’s not too late.

Do you collect anything? If so, what, why, and for how long?

I have an embarrassingly extensive collection of bowls, especially vintage Fiestaware, all sizes and colors. If you look at my kitchen cabinet shelves you will imagine that I must be constantly hosting wild dinner parties in which everyone is consuming soups and stews and whatnot. I’ve been gathering these bowls for decades—and I suspect that this particular fetish has something to do with my quest for a state in which I can feel both open and filled at the same time.

What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?

Fascinating question that goes far beyond semantics. Ideally, being a writer means (for me) to be all about writing as an action, a way of listening deeply to a voice that is somehow mine and yet also not mine. Akin to being in a trance, a surrender to something passing through me, making myself available to translating that interior “life” onto a page. Being an author is much more about the finished product, the outcome (after years or even decades) of the action I’ve just described. It means turning surrender into a form of service to the thing I’ve made, helping it find readers and listeners, people for whom the work is (again, ideally) bringing some bit of illumination or insight or shared joy or shared sorrow. As an author, I’m aware that my work isn’t quite complete until that encounter takes place between writer and reader. It’s not so much a shifting of gears for me as it is a shifting of attention—from inner to outer. To you.