Norman Rosten (January 1, 1913 – March 7, 1995) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist.
Early life Rosten was born to a Polish Jewish familyMigrants, Immigrants, and Slaves: Racial and Ethnic Groups in America By Thompson Dele Olasiji. p.118. in New York City and grew up in Hurleyville, New York. He graduated from Brooklyn College and New York University, and the University of Michigan, where he met Arthur Miller. Each won the Avery Hopwood Award.
Career In 1979, Brooklyn's borough president Howard Golden named Rosten as the poet laureate of Brooklyn.
Among Rosten's work outside the field of poetry, he wrote the libretto for Ezra Laderman's opera Marilyn. He also wrote the screenplay for Sidney Lumet's film Vu du Pont, adapting Miller's A View from the Bridge. He visited Mickey Knox in Rome.
Rosten was a poetry consultant for Simon and Schuster Publishers. It was through that role that he came to know fellow poet Andrew Glaze. The two became friends and Glaze later dedicated his book I am the Jefferson County Courthouse to Rosten.
His work appeared in The New Yorker.
Death Rosten married his wife, Hedda Rowinski, in 1938. Together they had one child, daughter Patricia, in 1946. He resided in Brooklyn after college. The Rostens knew Marilyn Monroe for the last seven years of her life.
Rosten died in New York City from congestive heart failure on March 7, 1995, at the age of 81.
Awards 1940 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition 1941 Guggenheim Fellowship
Works
Poetry Return Again, Traveler, Yale University Press, 1940 The big road: a narrative poem, Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1946 Imagine Seeing You Here: a world of poetry, lively and lyrical Thrive Upon the Rock, Trident Press, 1965
In Guernica
Plays First Stop to Heaven, 1941 Mister Johnson, an adaptation of Joyce Cary's novel of the same name (premiere 1956) Mardi Gras The Golden Door
Novels Under the Boardwalk, Prentice-Hall, 1968 Over and Out, G. Braziller, 1972
Non-fiction Marilyn: An Untold Story, New American Library, 1973 Marilyn among Friends, with photographer Sam Shaw. UK: Bloomsbury (1987)
Anthologies
References
External links
"Norman Rosten", doollee