By Sam Cavanagh~
Kate Rosenberg is a writer of poetry, nonfiction, and short stories, an English professor at Penn State, and the owner of an imaginary dog named Yadi.
An English Professor
Photo from psu.edu
Last semester, I had the opportunity to be in her English 50 creative writing class and learned so much from it. In her class, we wrote poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, and more. I had never written flash fiction or nonfiction before this class, and after taking this course, flash fiction became my favorite style of writing. I also was not a very confident writer before taking English 50, especially in poetry, but this class really changed that for me.
Professor Rosenberg was extremely helpful and encouraging. Something I think that really helped me in this course was that whenever I went to Professor Rosenberg’s office hours to edit or discuss my work with her, she never told me I needed to change anything. She would make comments and give me ideas or suggestions, but if I liked something the way it was, she told me to leave it because it was my writing. She taught me that at the end of the day, how I feel about my own work matters much more than how other people feel about my work. I think that really ended up improving the quality of my work.
A Writer
Professor Rosenberg does a good amount of writing herself when she has the time and has even had some of her work published in the journal NDR. Right now she writes mainly poetry, and her poems are often what she submits to be published. Although her favorite or most common type of writing to do is poetry, her favorite type of writing to read is fiction (sometimes flash, sometimes short). She says sometimes when she isn’t too busy, she likes to become “completely engrossed in a really good novel.”
Photo from echo.co.uk
When it comes to submitting work, Professor Rosenberg thinks that it is important to have other things going on at the time you submit your work to be published. She also advised to submit to different places or different pieces so that you have other things to look forward to and think about if your work does get rejected.
She says, “Once it’s submitted, it’s submitted, and stressing out about it isn’t what gets it published.”I think that this is a common problem a lot of writers have because submitting their writing that they worked very hard on can be stressful, especially if the writer is looking for validation from wherever they are submitting to.
A Jewelry Maker
Photo from etsy.com
Creative writing isn’t the only creative aspect of Professor Rosenberg’s life that she is passionate about. She also owns her own jewelry business, in which she makes handcrafted jewelry. Her jewelry business is called “The Piper and the Pea,” and its name was inspired by her daughter Piper.
She is very into visual arts and says she constantly gets bored and likes to “mix things up.” Some things she does to be creative and mix things up are moving the furniture around in her home and making postcard collections in her office, which she is constantly rearranging. I think that it is pretty common for a lot of writers to be creative in different aspects of their life other than just in their writing.
A Creative Inspiration
Like Professor Rosenberg, I am more on the creative side as well and hope that as I grow older I am able to incorporate that into my life in so many different ways just like she has. I intend to keep using the writing techniques I learned in her class as I continue to write, and I will continue to edit my work until I am satisfied with it, just as she taught me. Professor Rosenberg is pretty inspiring to creative writers like me, and I hope she continues to be creative in all aspects of her life; especially in her writing, though, because she really is amazing at it.
If you’re looking to be as inspired as I was by Professor Rosenberg, be sure to check out some of her work online!