My name is Rosina Lippi. I am a well established author, editor and researcher, a former tenured university professor, and an award winning novelist with eleven — soon to be twelve — novels in print with major publishers.
Under my own name I write contemporary novels: Homestead (awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award and shortlisted for Britain’s prestigious Orange Prize) The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square, and Tied to the Tracks. Under the pen name Sara Donati I am the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of the Bonner family in the vast forests in upstate New York, from about 1792-1825. My newest novel about the Bonner family is Where the Light Enters which follows from The Gilded Hour.
This newer series jumps ahead past the destruction of the Civil War to follow Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s grandchildren into the twentieth century.
In the past I have reviewed fiction for Publishers Weekly, and I still review on occasion. The majority of my book reviews can be found at Goodreads.
I was born and raised in Chicago, but lived for longer periods of time in Europe, on the East Coast, and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My undergraduate degree is from the University of Illinois, Chicago campus. I have an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, both with specialization in linguistics.
From 1988 until 2000, I was a tenured professor of linguistics and creative writing with a full range of teaching, mentoring and administrative responsibilities. As an academic I am a nationally recognized authority on language and discrimination, with expert witness experience. I wrote the standard text used in university classes that touch on issues of language, ideology and discrimination, titled English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. The revised, expanded second edition came out in 2012.
I left academia in 2000 and took up writing full time.
I now live on Puget Sound with my husband, daughter, a Havanese pupper called Jimmy Dean, and Bella, a rambunctious cat. Sara lives with me and my family, but refuses to answer the phone, do windows or make herself useful in any way at all.
“This is an outstanding first novel in a new series, and with it comes all the best feelings evoked by good writing: empathy, concern, drive, despair, and ecstasy. It’s the beginning of the best of journeys in historical fiction.” —Historical Novel Society
Representation
In all matters regarding fiction published under my own name or one of my pen names (Rosina Lippi-Green, Sara Donati) I am represented by Jill Grinberg of Grinberg Literary Management.