In a New Interview, Rose Solari Opens up about Publishing and Writing in the era of COVID
"At the beginning of ASP we were told 'You'd be lucky if you made it 3-5 years.'" 10 years and a million trials later, poet and ASP co-founder Rose Solari delivers this extremely honest interview to author Kathy Rampsberger
Author Kathy Rampsberger conducts this incredible digital interview as part of her "Story Hour" series.
It's been months now since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic and much has changed in the landscape of publishing and writing. Always attuned to change and always in conversation with the past, writer and poet Rose Solari discusses the art that matters to now and living through the age of COVID. In this interview you will learn about Rose's writing process, whether she outlines or writes spontaneously, her parents, her ear for music, the work and research that went into her first novel, A Secret Woman, keeping the doors open in the time of a nationwide pandemic, and so much more. This is a candid and emotionally vulnerable interview from one of Maryland's finest women of letters. It is not to be missed.
Blurring the boundaries between past and present, between the body and the spirit, between female and male, A Secret Woman is a sexually-charged adventure through time and space, a profound meditation on the mother-daughter connection, and an enlightening exploration of what it means to make love, to make art, and to make a life worth living.
A Secret Woman is not only a pleasure to read, it is sneaky serious in a way I particularly like. Rose Solari explores the eternal literary theme of self — who we are, who are the ones we love, and how we invent and reinvent these people, trying always to paint ourselves into the vast canvas of life and history. A very promising fiction debut. — Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of Perfume River and Severance
Reflections on my First AWP; or, Sleepless in SeaTac
ASP Intern and Washington College Senior Eylie Sasajima on Her First AWP Conference
An interview with the late, great Linda Pastan
Along the indifferent corridors / of space, angels could be hiding,” Linda Pastan wrote in her poem “Muse.” ASP honors the legacy of Linda Pastan (1932–2023), a former Poet Laureate of Maryland, who passed away last week. Pastan was the author of the 2018 poetry book A Dog Runs Through It, which won the Towson University Literary Award.
Here’s to 2022! And Here’s a Sale…
2022 was a big year for ASP and our writers. In March, we had a booth at the annual AWP Conference, and our offsite reading, featuring authors Saida Agostini, Dave Housley, Elizabeth Hazen, and Richard Peabody, along with special guests Teri Ellen Cross Davis and Leslie Pietrzyk, had a standing-room-only audience packed with literary stars.