About
Robert Rosen is the author of "Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon," an international bestseller that’s been translated into many languages. His latest book, "A Brooklyn Memoir," is about growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 60s, surrounded by Auschwitz survivors and W.W. II vets. His investigative memoir, "Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography," was published to critical acclaim across the cultural spectrum, from Vanity Fair to Adult Video News, in the U.S. and U.K. by Headpress. Over the course of a diverse career, he has edited pornographic magazines and an underground newspaper, written speeches for the Secretary of the Air Force, and been awarded a Hugo Boss poetry prize. Rosen’s work has appeared in publications all over the world, including The Independent (U.K.), Uncut (U.K.), Headpress journal (U.K.), Mother Jones, The Soho Weekly News, La Repubblica (Italy), Dagospia (Italy), VSD (France), Proceso (Mexico), Reforma (Mexico), and El Heraldo (Colombia).
Born in Brooklyn, Rosen attended Erasmus Hall High School and the City College of New York, where he studied creative writing with Joseph Heller and Francine du Plessix Gray. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, a writer, editor, and singer.
Featured Work
A Brooklyn Memoir
From the final days of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the mid-1950s to the arrival of the Beatles in 1964, "A Brooklyn Memoir" is an unsentimental journey through one rough-and-tumble working-class neighborhood. Though only a 20-minute and 15-cent subway ride from the gleaming towers of Manhattan, across the East River, Flatbush remained insular and provincial—a place where Auschwitz survivors and WWII vets lived side by side and the war lingered like a mass hallucination.
Meet Bobby, a local kid who shares a shabby apartment with his status-conscious mother and bigoted father, a soda jerk haunted by memories of the Nazi death camp he helped liberate. Flatbush, to Bobby, is a world of brawls with neighborhood "punks," Hebrew-school tales of Adolf Eichmann's daring capture, and grade-school duck-and-cover drills. Drawn to images of mushroom clouds and books about executions, Bobby ultimately turns the seething hatred he senses everywhere against himself.
From a perch in his father's candy store, Bobby provides a child's-eye view of the mid-20th-century American experience—a poignant intertwining of the personal and historical.
Other Works
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Bobby in Naziland: A Tale of Flatbush
2019
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Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography
2012
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Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon
2002
Awards and Recognition
- Hugo Boss Poetry Prize, 1996
Press and Media Mentions
- Article about the decline and fall of the men's magazine in The New York Times
- Review of "Beaver Street" in Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Column about "Nowhere Man" in New York Daily News
- Review of "Nowhere Man" in Metroland
- Review of "Beaver Street" in Erotic Review
- Video interview with Robert Rosen by the editors of Erotic Review
- Feature about "Beaver Street" in Bizarre magazine
- Review of "Beaver Street" on H-Net
- Video interview with Robert Rosen on Rew & Who?
- Interview with Robert Rosen on Core of Destruction Radio
- Radio interview with Robert Rosen on The Time Warped Hour
- Robert Rosen reads from "Nowhere Man"
- Robert Rosen writes about censorship for The Independent
