Moore, Rosalie, 1910-....

Rosalie Moore was born Gertrude Elizabeth Moore in Oakland, California on October 8, 1910. A widely-published poet and author, Moore's work has appeared in many periodicals and published volumes. She collaborated on a series of children's books with her husband, Bill Brown. Moore taught basic writing and creative writing classes at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California until her retirement in 1976. She died June 18, 2003.

Rosalie Moore was born Gertrude Elizabeth Moore in Oakland, California on October 8, 1910. She first ventured into poetry as a teenager, with a poem protesting--in the grand high flown, "poetic" manner-- the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. The poem was published in the Oakland Tribune . Since that time she has become a widely published poet.

Rosalie Moore attended the University of California at Berkeley where she majored in English and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in 1932; in 1934 she received her M.A. in English Literature, also at Berkeley. However, Moore insists that her career as a poet really began several years later when she began attending the poetry-writing classes of critic and writer Lawrence Hart in 1937. Hart, Jeanne McGahey, Moore, Robert Horan, and several other poets formed a group known as the Activists who worked from the tenet that through accurate language and imagery a poem should give the reader a corresponding experience.

In 1938 Rosalie Moore was awarded the University of Chicago's Charles H. Sergel award for poetic drama with her play The Boar, now expanded and entitled The Calydonian Boar Hunt . She won the Albert Bender Award in literature in 1943, and in 1949 received the Yale Series Younger Poet Award for her collection of poems The Grasshopper's Man (originally titled "Journeys Toward Center"). Rosalie Moore also has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1950 and again in 1951.

Rosalie Moore's work has been published in many periodicals, including Accent, Furioso, The New Yorker, and Saturday Review. Her books include, among others, The Grasshopper's Man and Other Poems, 1949; Year of the Children, 1977; a book of poems dealing with the Children's Crusade in Europe in 1212 A.D.; and Of Singles and Doubles, a collection of poems published in 1979. Both Year of the Children and Of Singles and Doubles were published by Woolmer/Brotherson, and Year of the Children was nominated for a Pulitzer award. With her husband, Bill Brown, she collaborated on a series of children's books published by Coward-McCann, including The Forest Fireman, Whistle Park, The Boy Who Got Mailed, Big Rig, and The Department Store Ghost . Two other books, Tickley and the Fox and The Hippopotamus That Wanted to Be a Baby were published by Lantern Press.

In 1965 Rosalie Moore joined the faculty at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, and taught basic writing and creative writing classes until her retirement in 1976. Miss Moore is currently living in the San Francisco Bay area and has three daughters and three grandchildren also living in Marin County.