Rosalie Moore (1910–2001)

Rosalie Moore was born Gertrude Elizabeth Moore in Oakland, California. She began writing poetry as a teenager, with an early poem published in the Oakland Tribune. She majored in English at the University of California at Berkeley and graduated magna cum laude in 1932; two years later, she received her M.A. in English literature. From 1935 to 1937 she worked for radio station KLX in Oakland, and then the Census Bureau. In 1937, she attended poetry-writing classes given by Lawrence Hart, and with him and several other poets, she became part of the so-called Activist Group. In 1938, her play The Boar -- since expanded and entitled The Calydonian Boar Hunt -- won the University of Chicago's Charles H. Sergel award for poetic drama. 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). Her work has been published in many periodicals, including Accent, Furioso, The New Yorker, and Saturday Review. Her books include Year of the Children (1977), poems dealing with the Children's Crusade in Europe in 1212 A.D.; and Of Singles and Doubles (1979). With her husband William "Bill" Brown, whom she married in 1942, she collaborated on a series of children's books including The Forest Fireman, Whistle Park, The Boy Who Got Mailed, Big Rig, and The Department Store Ghost.

In 1965, she joined the faculty at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, and taught basic writing and creative writing classes until her retirement in 1976.