Press – Page 4 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Females, fiction and uprising in the Poly Post, Cal Poly Pomona

Cal Poly Student journalist Daniela Avila did a great job summing up the points I made in my recent library lecture on my favorite female science fiction writers. — Rosanne

Education on the role of women in science fiction — which has been gravely overlooked — was brought by Rosanne Welch at Cal Poly Pomona’s University Library last Thursday, April 25.

Welch discussed several different women in this genre.

Not only in books and written works, but also in television and movies.

She was very passionate about the subject and the significance of women in the genre which many fail to acknowledge.

“It’s a place where audiences and writers go to discuss the issues of the world in a safe place,” Welch said, in regards to science fiction.

Welch began the lecture with the woman that started it all — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Shelley is responsible for writing the famous novel “Frankenstein.”

This was written in 1818; however, she asked that the book remained anonymous due to the reactions of a woman writing such a dark and challenging work. Her intentions were to sit back and wait for the book to be judged based off of merit not the author.

It wasn’t until 1823 that her name was placed on the cover.

Read Females, fiction and uprising by Daniela Avila in Poly Post

Watch the entire presentation here!

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

Join me at the Paperback L.A. #3 Anthology Launch Party, May 5, 2019 [Event]

If you’ll be in Los Angeles on Sunday May 5th and want to see the architecture of the Helms Bakery – come to the Launch party for the 3rd book in the Paperback LA anthology – the editor, Susan LaTempa, reprinted my article about the writers of The Monkees TV show since that is so iconic LA. — Rosanne

Join us for a reception and brief readings to celebrate the launch of Paperback L.A. Book 3 A Casual Anthology: Secrets. SigAlerts. Ravines. Records.

This is the third volume of the acclaimed new-school trilogy the creates a freewheeling mosaic of the city in words and photographs.

Join contributors including Lisa See, Alexandra Hedison, River Garza, Ann Elliott Cutting, Lou Mathews, Rosanne Welch, RJ Smith and Warren Hill for brief readings and views of photos. Culver City Councilmembers Meghan Sahli-Wells and Daniel Lee will welcome attendees.

Free and open to the public.

The book launch is at the Helms Design Center event space, 8745 Washington Blvd., Culver City CA. 90232.

Parking is available at complimentary parking lots located at the Helms Bakery entrance on the south side of Venice Boulevard at Helms Avenue (in front of Rejuvenation and across from Father’s Office) for your visit.

Additional lots are located on the northeast and northwest corners of Helms Avenue and Venice Boulevard.

Rosanne and “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Highlighted on Cal State Fullerton Web Site

How exciting – the folks who man the main website at Cal State Fullerton choseto highlight an article recently written about the book I edited – When Women Wrote Hollywood – on the very, very front of the university website – so when you log on, I’m the one of the first things you see. Pretty cool. — Rosanne

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood

or Buy the Book on Amazon

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Dr. Rosanne Welch’s Essay, “Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees”, Included In Paperback L.A. Book 3!

The lovely thing about putting writing out into the world is that sometimes you receive calls or emails from editors who stumbled upon your work and want to reprint it in their own anthologies.

Such a lovely experience happened to me recently when Susan La Tempa, editor of Paperback LA – a series of 3 anthology collections of writings about Los Angeles across the decades, contacted me. She had read my article on the wild and crazy careers of the former writers of The Monkees and wanted to add it to her 3rd collection.

Happily, I received my contributor copy in the mail today and it looks great. The fact that my name appears in a Table of Contents along with great California writers like Casey Williams, Lisa See, Harry Shearer and Jonathon Gold (the only Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer) is… amazing to me.

Can’t wait for the publication launch party, signing and reception Sunday May 5, 2019 (4-6 p.m) at the Helms Design Center. Free and open to the public!

Hope to see you there!

Secrets. Sigalerts. Ravines. Records.

In Paperback L.A., A Casual Anthology Book 3, our contributors deftly command fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, magazine writing, memoir and other forms to conjure up visions of a Beverly Hills Wonderbread factory, the founding of the first sustained gay rights organization in the country, early 20th-century wagon-train settlers in Dodger Stadium area, a late 20th-century DTLA traffic tie-up that becomes a kind of symphony, a humorous 1940s novelty song whose refrain buoyed civil rights activists, the 1990s outrigger-team apprenticeship of a Tongva youth―and more. Plus, photo essays on “Motion and Stasis,” “Hometown Gold,” “The Right Notes,” and “Nowhere.”

Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via California State University Fullerton News Center

Thanks to Karen Lindell for attending my library lecture on When Women Wrote Hollywood at the Pollak Library on the campus of California State University, Fullerton. Her article tries to make sense of the many subjects that have populated my books, and she rightly deduces that it is highlighting the work of women writers that is my main mission. Even in my book on The Monkees I made sure to fully cover the career of Treva Silverman, who by writing on that show became one of the first women to write for television without a male partner.

Video of “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Coming Soon!

Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via CSUF News Center

As a young girl in Ohio, Rosanne Welch was a regular at her local library, pouring over autobiographies and memoirs of screenwriters from Hollywood’s early years. By the age of 10, she knew that she wanted to have a career in television or film.

Welch, lecturer in screenwriting at Cal State Fullerton, did make it to Hollywood, where she wrote for television shows “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Picket Fences,” ABC’s “Nightline” and “Touched by an Angel.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to the studio … as Welch prepared for her career, she was surprised to find that the female screenwriters she had read about as a child weren’t mentioned in her screenwriting courses.

This piqued her curiosity. Upon researching the matter, she found several reasons why these women had been sidelined in history.

Read Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via CSUF News Center

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

A Professor, Female Screenwriters and a Monkee Walk Into a Lecture … – OC Weekly, February 26, 2019

Well, that has to be a record (at least for me) – appearing in local newspapers two days in one week!

This article — A Professor, Female Screenwriters and a Monkee Walk Into a Lecture … — is about my upcoming Noontime Faculty talk on the history of Female Screenwriters for the Pollak Library at Cal State Fullerton. They take the time to mention the talk I gave last year about my book on The Monkees, which is a bit sad since what makes the book topical this week is the loss of Peter Tork.

But the beauty of both my books (I hope) is the fact that they bring much needed attention to writers and performers who weren’t necessarily lauded in their own time. —Rosanne

You know how you are going to lecture on topics from your new book and then something happens in the big old world that touches on your previous book?

Such is happening to Rosanne Welch, who is a writer and adjunct professor at Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut and Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

She is scheduled to give one of the Faculty Noon Time Talks in CSUF’s Pollock Library from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 5. These events are based on faculty research, which in Welch’s case is partly encapsulated in her most recent book, When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry (McFarland & Co., 2018).

However, on Feb. 21, actor/composer/musician Peter Tork, who is best known as the bass player/keyboardist with the Monkees, passed away, which prompted the re-release of something Welch had said about him:

Read A Professor, Female Screenwriters and a Monkee Walk Into a Lecture …

Get Rosanne’s Books Today!

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Rosanne is mentioned in “Titan Voice: My screenwriting realization steals the scene” – Orange County Register

You never know how much of an effect – if any – you’re having on students who are sometimes quiet in class, or looking at their computer screens when you think they ought to be looking at you… but this article was a wonderful reminder that they are listening, sometimes even amidst their multi-tasking lives. And what this MFA student took away didn’t come from any long lectures, really, but rather from the opening of all my classes where I bring in articles from recent newspaper stories about the film and television business and discuss what they mean to them and their futures. In this case, it had to do with which gendered writers are usually chosen for which genre films…a topic of deep interest to me – and through this article she published, I learned it was a topic of deep interest to Chelsea as well.

“Titan Voice: My screenwriting realization steals the scene” by Chelsea Barns

[…]

I can only lend my stream of consciousness to the screenwriting instructors I have had the pleasure to learn from in the MFA program. Specifically, when it comes to this filmmaker Michael Bay-type realization, I had to give the credit to lecturer Rosanne Welch. This woman has taught me more about what it is to be a female writer in Hollywood than I ever thought I needed to know. I would never have made this connection with the tone and the story of this film had it not been for her classes.

She has taught me that as a woman I need to speak up. I have to raise my voice, and in the way that I know how; writing. Going into this program I did not imagine I would grow as much as I have. Thank you to all my classmates and our faculty that push me every day to be better. I will miss learning from all of you when this wild ride of a program is over.

[…]

Read the entire column: Titan Voice: My screenwriting realization steals the scene“

Event: “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Rosanne Welch, Ph.D, Pollack Library, Cal State Fullerton, March 5, 2019, Noon

When Women Wrote Hollywood

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 (12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.) in PLS-360 (Pollack Library)
Rosanne Welch, Ph.D., Instructor and Editor of
“When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry”
Department of Cinema and Television Arts
College of Communications

This time I’ll discuss the women in my new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars – but fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

or Buy the Book on Amazon

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

New Review of “America’s Forgotten Founding Father: A Novel Based on the Life of Filippo Mazzei” from the Historical Novel Society

It’s so nice to see my book on Filippo Mazzei continuing to receive good reviews from the press. This one comes from website of the Historical Novel Society and seems to like being introduced to such an interesting man as Filippo.

The novel is more of a factual presentation than fictional storytelling; the chronology is interspersed with anecdotal conversations with Franklin, Jefferson, and others involved in the emerging American state. Readers learn about Mazzei’s involvement with the Virginia militia and his work advocating for independence from the British Crown in the Second Continental Congress, conducting business for the colonies in France, and writing essays supporting the American Revolution in the European press after he returns to his homeland.

Buy the book

They cap it off by telling their readers that…

“But the book has a larger focus than Mazzei’s place in the American Revolution. It covers his early years, travels in Turkey, and relationships with family as well as discussions of religion, the prerogatives of landed gentry versus the rights of ordinary people, even the proper pronunciation of Italian words.”

So glad they noticed that!

Read the entire review on the Historical Novel Society site

Our books, Women in American History, named to ALA’s 2018 list of Best Historical Materials

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

My co-editor Peg Lamphier and I are honored to have awoken this morning to this lovely email telling us that our book, Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, has been named to the American Library Association’s 2018 list of Best Historical Materials.

“The list recognizes effectiveness in coverage of historical resources in all fields of history and promotes enhanced availability of historical works and information, and is published in Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ). These sources are selected by the Historical Materials committee that seeks to improve the usefulness of bibliographies, historical materials, and indexes in the field of history and shared among bibliographers, indexers, publishers, and professional associations.”

Since both of us have our PhDs in American History – and we both have taught Women’s HIstory at one time or another (on top of our other courses) — this is a most wonderful acknowledgment of all the time we took to make sure as many women from as many multicultural backgrounds — and as many new documents (not merely retreads from past books) could be included. Of course, we also have to thank the many professional editors at ABC-Clio who helped proof and copyedit and cull permissions for all that material. It truly was a team effort.

Dear Dr. Welch:

I am writing as a representative of the Historical Materials Committee of the Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. It is my pleasure to inform you that your book, Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, has been named to the 2018 list of Best Historical Materials.

The list recognizes effectiveness in coverage of historical resources in all fields of history and promotes enhanced availability of historical works and information, and is published in Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ). These sources are selected by the Historical Materials committee that seeks to improve the usefulness of bibliographies, historical materials, and indexes in the field of history and shared among bibliographers, indexers, publishers, and professional associations.

Congratulations on your remarkable contributions to scholarly literature.

Sincerely,

Steven A. Knowlton