On the Trail of S.J. Rozan




Bios / Interviews / Profiles
 [ about Ms. Rozan, her writing, and as architect ]

...continuted from the main resource page:

Art Workshop International blog: Interview, by Barbara Shoup, June 10, 2008
(to be included in next ed. of Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors..)
... Agatha Christie ... Her characters are archetypes; she really understood human motivation and the human heart...
I have a twenty-pound cat, the best mouser I've ever had because he has the feeling he was put on this earth to catch mice. After he got his first mouse, he went right back to the mouse hole. I said, 'Look, this isn't going to happen again. You've got your face right there. What mouse is going to come out?' And he's looking at me like that cartoon – what the cat hears: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Of course the mouse came out again. That's what mice do. And he was there...

New York Times: Murder, She Once Wrote, by Gregory Beyer, May 25, 2008
"...that level of lawlessness has really disappeared...Anyone who has recently come to New York would pick it up [CHINA TRADE] and think: 'What is wrong with this woman? What is she making up?' ..."

Science Fiction Society of Northern NJ: Face the Fiction, Nov 10, 2007, Post Meeting Write-up
... She is a fan of the old noir movies and defines noir in that vein – the reformed bad-boy who tries to touch goodness and can't...We then asked her to read a passage for us from Bronx Noir. She got us hooked and left off at a part in the story where you just "had to know" what ...

Cool in Your Code: Code Read w/Hank Wasiak, August 30, 2007
Talking about Bronx Noir (2:37 video) · link 2
...I follow people down the street and I go to places I'm told not to go...

The Oregonian: Brush with greatness: 'Tuckerizing' your name into a novel, by April Henry, Dec 24, 2006
... Mandarin Plaid featured a gay character named Steve. I named him that as an homage to 'Steel Magnolias' ... When the book came out I got calls from three gay guys I know named Steve ... they were all pleased as punch to think they were in the book ...

Chatterrific: online chat, Dec 10, 2006, 3:00‑4:00 EST

WONDERING! (blog): Thankful, by I_Wonder, Wed, Nov 22, 2006
   Blog entry tells of enquiry about tea and Ms. Rozan's reply.

New York Times: Essay There's a New Bad Guy in Town, by Marilyn Stasio, Sept 17, 2006 [near end]
"... New York authors ... have hesitated to re-structure the formulas of their series novels ... Rozan ... wrote a stand‑alone crime novel, "Absent Friends" (2004), about a group of ... friends who lost one of their own when the twin towers fell. But that was as unusual as finding a New Orleans novelist ready to incorporate ... Hurricane Katrina ..."

USMMA: Humanities Sea‑Year Project includes Absent Friends in approved reading list; 2006

Coliseum Books: NWU Panel Discussion " Copyright Piracy: Google and Others Are Plundering Authors' Intellectual Property and Why That Matters", with Gerard Colby and John Dinges, March 2006

Two articles about Shepard Hall (restoration project Ms. Rozan worked on as an architect):
Concrete International, Aug 2003
CUNY Preserves the Past, Builds for the Future; scroll to the City College, Where It All Began section.

Architectural Record: From job meetings came crime‑novel characters, by James S. Russell, AIA, (2005)
"... Over 15 years, Rozan moved from the practice of architecture to growing success as a crime novelist... With the publication of her latest ... book, Absent Friends, she has been able at last to do what all novelists want to do: leave her 'day job' ... to write full-time. ..."

Steven Torres: The AHMM Interviews (~2005/2006)

Steven Torres: Interview (2005/2006)

PR Web: Award Winning NYC Author Trio Tours Texas, Feb 15, 2005
"Authors ... Coleman ... Fusilli ... and ... Rozan, known to some as the 'Blue mafia' ..."

David Skibbins: Q & A Who are your favorite authors?, 2005
"Dickens, Kazanzankas, Rowlings, Hemingway, Laurie King, Agatha, Nero Wolfe, Bruce Spalding, Tolkin, Mary Oliver, but I would sell my soul to be able to write as well as S.J. Rozan."

Casa Mysterioso: Interview, by John McAuley, 2005

New York Times: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: WEST VILLAGE; Snaring Her Muse in the Drift of the Hudson, by Gabriel Cohen, May 29, 2005
"She has won nearly every award in the field of crime fiction. But only the readers of S.J. Rozan's blog know about her private writing passion ... haiku ..."

Men Can Stop Rape: Winter and Night is listed as a program resource, 2005 ['../info-url2699/info-url_show.htm?doc_id=282213#winter' no longer online]

Tart City: In Praise of Hard‑boiled Women, by Ruth Flannery [near bottom]
"... accepted by the boys as hard‑boiled ... Ten minute egg easy."

All Info About Mystery Books: The Novels of S. J. Rozan, by Bill Bickel, 2004 ['mysterybooks.allinfoabout.com/rozan/' no longer online]
"... Book cover blubs notwithstanding, there really isn't any such thing as a Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery novel ... Lydia's books involve family, extended family, friends of family, and the culture of Chinatown, while Bill's are more traditional hard‑boiled detective novels..."

Publisher's Weekly: Scoping 9/11 Morality, by Sybil Steinberg, 11/1/2004, Vol 251 #44, p 38
"... S.J. Rozan loves William Blake. The epigraph to her Shamus Award‑winning mystery "Winter and Night" quotes these lines from Songs of Experience: 'Then come home my children/The Sun has gone down' ..."

The Agony Column: Rozan & Stross vs. Bookstore Shelves, by Terry D'Auray, Nov 19, 2004
"... people who say 'I don't read mysteries, I only read good books' ... They do two things, they force writers who deserve a bigger audience into the ghetto shelves, and concomitantly when some writers are let out because their books are better than you'd expect for the genre, it leaves a lower average level in the ghetto ..."

Mystery News: Interview, by Chris Aldrich, Oct/Nov 2004
"... 'Absent Friends' ... with the boys and girls ... I started going back into their childhood because ... you are who you always were – you are who your childhood made you ..."

Bookreporter.com: Interview, by Carol Fitzgerald, Joe Hartlaub, Wiley Saichek, Oct 15, 2004 ['bookreporter.com/authors/au-rozan-sj.asp' no longer online]
"... As for the characters from 'Absent Friends', I don't think they'll be back. This was their story; it's been told. ..."

Deseret News: Novelist ponders truth, friendship, heroism, Dennis Lythgoe, Oct 10, 2004
"... S.J. Rozan lives less than a mile from ground zero ... Even though she was in Cuba on that fateful day, she returned ... to find a place totally different from the one she left. ..."

Crimespree Magazine: Cover Story SJ Rozan, with Gabriel Cohen, Ruth Jordan & Jeremy Lynch, Issue #2, Aug/Sep 2004

Library Journal: Interview (re: Absent Friends), with Andi Shechter article, Apr 1, 2004
"... I'd like to keep alternating series and standalones. Bill and Lydia have their own stories to tell, but other stories are better told by other people."

The Evening Standard (London): Avoiding the disaster..., by Elsbeth Lindner, Sep 1, 2003 [Highbeam excerpt]
"... Rozan ... believes many Americans would now prefer not to revisit ... that September day ... Her own world view darkened. But as a crime writer ... ;We deal with what life hands us,' she says. She quotes words attributed to Isak Dinesen: 'Any sorrow can be born if you can put it into a story' ..."

UN Int'l School: Summer Reading Assignment China Trade, June 2004 and 2002 [reading lists no longer online]
[04: http://www.unis.org/pdf/web/news/english/summer_read04/M3.pdf & 02: www.unis.org/pdf/web/news/summer_read02/summer2002_requiredreading.pdf]

Interrogations: Interview by Jon Jordan
   ISBN: 0974466506; Paperback; Mystery One Books (October 2003)

January Magazine: Scene of the Crime: the Edgar Awards (three-quarters down page), by Anthony Rainone, May 1, 2003
"... The biggest award of the night, though – and the last one to be announced – was for Best Novel. When Rick Riordan and Walter Mosley gave the prize to S.J. Rozan, for Winter and Night, there was much applauding and cheering. Among others, Rozan thanked her editor ... who she said was 'right, most of the time' ..."

New York Times; New York Observed: Whodunit? Suddenly Nobody Cared (link 2), by Ellen Pall, Sunday, Feb 9, 2003
"...early September 2001... Rozan ... had just started ... her first stand-alone novel ... 'After Sept. 11, it was for two reasons completely unwritable,' Ms. Rozan said. 'One was emotional: Whoever that woman was who dreamt up that book, she was gone.' The second was practical. 'The land grab in Harlem that I had in mind was not the issue ... At that point, it was possible the entire real estate market would collapse.' ..."

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Jan 2003, Davos, Switzerland
Dealing with Violence panel ['weforum.org/en/knowledge/Themes/KN_SESS_SUMM_7800?url=/en/knowledge/Themes/KN_SESS_SUMM_7800' no longer online]
"... Violence is not by definition related to poverty... a major cause being the sense of purpose that violence can give especially if it is required to become a member of a group."
Towards a Global Ethic panel ['weforum.org/en/knowledge/KN_SESS_SUMM_7506?url=/en/knowledge/KN_SESS_SUMM_7506' no longer online]
"... rules have to be imposed on business: "They have no reasons to self regulate."

Mystery Readers Int'l: interview Qiu Xiaolong interviews Ms. Rozan, 2003

Mystery News: Lydia Chin's Chinatown, Sharon Zukowski gets the tour, page 2, page 3, page 4, 2003

The American Prospect Online: Pulp Culture: History, Hard-Boiled, by Gary Phillips, March 11, 2002 [quarter-way down page]
"... to learn in what ways the terrorist attacks have changed us, we do well to look to genre fiction...At ... [the 2001] Bouchercon ... which took place in November at a hotel not far from the damaged Pentagon ... Keith Snyder and S.J. Rozan ... led a discussion ... on how the events of September had affected their writing. Rozan said that the difficulty of being a writer 'is that ... writing of necessity involves narrative content. Painters, musicians, dancers can create art directly out of emotion ... but writers can't.' And narrative ... has to be about something. 'In the case of 9-11 ... the events are so much bigger than anything you can write that the question becomes, What can you write that approaches the emotions, some of which we've never felt before, without trivializing the events?' ..."

Deadly Pleasures: 2002 Edgar Nominees, Feb 7, 2002
"... possibly the prototypical mystery writer currently working. Her plot, pacing and characterizations are so good that others should fall under her influence."   – Larry Gandle

Mystery One Bookstore: Interview, by Jon Jordan, Jan 5, 2002 (link on Books 'n' Bytes)
"... How would you describe your books to some one who hasn't read them yet? 'The Bill Smith books: hard-boiled, dark. The Lydia Chin books: a little less hard-edged. Both: deeply involved with place, concerned with moral issues' ... What is the one thing always in your refrigerator?'Milk. I drink an awful lot of tea while I write, and I like milk in my tea.' ..."

The Odyssey Bookshop: Interview, by Neil Novik, Wednesday, Feb 28, 2001
"... What's your greatest challenge in keeping your series fresh? '... the relationship between Bill and Lydia ... whether it's going to get there before we all die. You can't go on with this 'edge of the seat' kind of thing forever - it gets stale. The implications of further developments in their relationship include what will happen in Lydia's family. If she does make a decision about Bill that her family doesn't like – what happens then' ..."

UniversiTip: Literary term paper on Stone Quarry, 5 pages, 2001

Jewish Exponent: Author Pins Her Fortunes on Two Private Eyes, by Faygie Levy, Oct 12, 2000
"... Rozan believes a parallel exists between Jewish and Chinese culture on all kinds of levels ... 'Chinese and Jews [place an] emphasis on scholarship ... food is important, family association is important ... these things are part of the culture' ...

Publisher's Weekly: What's Your Motive? Plots Don't Come Easily, by Judith Rosen, Oct 23, 2000
"... Rozan builds her well‑crafted books and stories sentence by sentence ... Originally, says Rozan, 'I was thinking of two series. Partly because it never occurred to me that anyone would publish this as one' ..."

New York Times: They Love New York, by Dilys Winn, Oct 31, 1999
... Which brings up the New York eyesore: the construction site ... Rozan devoted "No Colder Place" to construction shenanigans, and if you want to know ... about what goes in the building trade ... Ms. Rozan's your gal. In prose as unsentimental as a jackhammer she disses unions, mobs, payoffs, 'accidents' and ...

AudioFile Magazine: Interview, by Steven Steinbock, Aug/Sept 1999
... a Chinese buffet of delightful contradictions. Her books are probing and profound, but ... her humor is witty and infectious. This pint-sized New York architect is neither Chinese-American nor a macho male, but she writes effectively and credibly from both points of view ... Would she ever consider reading one of her own works for an audiobook? 'I think I'd enjoy it. I don't know why anyone would hire me, but I'd love to do it.' ...

Oberlin Alumni Magazine: Crime and Publishing, page 2, page 3, ed. Marcia Talley '65, Winter 1999
... One of the great things about writing in alternating voices is that they can each be a terrifically exaggerated part of me. Lydia Chin is me as I was--energetic, optimistic, ready to save the world. Bill Smith is me as I am--darker, more tired, knowing that in most cases the war is over and the good guys lost ...

CBS News: S.J. Rozan Builds Her Case, November 25, 1998
"She is a woman whose talent spans two professions. She can design a building and she can create a novel ... When ... in college, she dreamed of being a writer, but she ... 'wanted a real profession ... And I'd always been interested in architecture and in design, and in really what makes things work ... And what the secrets were really. I always had a feeling when I was a kid that I didn't really know what was going on. Everybody else knew stuff that I didn't know. And this was a way to know that stuff.' ..."

Mystery Readers Journal – The Big Apple: New York Mysteries I, S.J. Rozan's New York, by Andi Shechter, Vol 13, No 4, Winter '97‑98

Mystery News: Interview, Sep/Oct 1997

Crime‑Corner: Interview (no longer online), 1996/1997
(was at: www.crime-corner.de/authors-sjrozan.html)
"... As soon as the characters start talking and moving around and I see the place, I really don't know what the story will be, although I have a vague idea. ..."

The Great Women Superheroes, by Trina Robbins, Kitchen Sink Press, 1996, p 125
... the female readership took notice ... Rosan expressed the feelings of many other women when she wrote: 'I have always felt the lack of, and ... rather wistfully longed for a superhero with whom I could identify more completely than I have been able to with, say Sue Richards ... or the Wasp: I was wishing for a smarty-pants, wise-cracking, strong, brave-courageous-and-bold, bounce-backable woman: and, in the Cat, I think I see the beginnings of her.' ...

Progressive Architecture: Competition Roundup: ... & New York, August 1985, Vol.LXVI, No.8, p.34

... a coalition ... has awarded first prize in its Bicycle Shelter Design Competition to Shira Rosan ... for a fence frame of welded steel tubes painted black, with an inner sheet-metal skin. (The) jury (was) composed of design professionals, traffic engineers, and crime prevention specialists ...

New York Times: New York Day By Day: Homes for Bikes, by Susan Heller Anderson, David W. Dunlap, July 20, 1985
... Bicycle parking is the main obstacle to increased bicycle use in urban areas, which is why the Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council sonsored a bicycle-shelter design competition. The winners were honored at a reception opening an exhibition of 20 entries ... The designs, mostly by bike-riding architects, were ingenious, often esthetic ... The first prize ... was won by ... a New York architect who used a wrought-iron picket-fence design. The challenge was 'esthetic and philosophical ... I wanted something to fit into the neighborhood that wouldn't take it over' ...

New York Times: Calendar: Bicycle Shelters, July 18, 1985
... An exhibit of 20 of the 47 designs submitted ... Shira Rosan ... used wrought-iron picket fencing in the winning scheme ...

[14-Feb-2012 e-mail from Ms. Rozan: The shelter was a wrought-iron picket fence design, to be built from welded steel tubes painted black. That is, it was designed to look like a lot of the wrought iron around the city, but able to be made much more cheaply and last longer. (No one ever made it, by the way. A classic architectural competition result.) ]

AIA Journal: ... American Proposals ... for Les Halles, April 1980, Vol.69 No.4, pp.27–30
p.27: An international competition for an alternative to the offical plan for the development of the Quartier des Halles in Paris, which drew entries from 25 countries, with more than 600 projects finally referred to the competition's organizing committee, has resulted in five winning proposals ... four other projects received special mention ... citations were given for six other proposals, including (an) American team ... A winner of a citation is a group from the State University of New York at Buffalo, comprised of Shira Rosan, ...
p.30: ... ... Debate about the 25-acre site, razed in 1971, brought the competition into being last year when (architecture groups) protested the Parisian government's proposed plans for the development of the medieval market district in the heart of Paris. ...

Progressive Architecture: Les Halles Jury: Diffuse Recognition, March 1980, Vol.LXI, No.3, pp.30–34
p.31: ... Citations: ...; Shira Rosan, U.S.A. (listing in left column)
p.34: ... The "citations" those kept in to represent the viewpoint of specific factions (whose names are listed in the offical releases) ...

New York Times: Pupils Exploring Riverdale Tract: 12 Take Part with Teachers in Special Nature Project, by Robert H. Terte, July 29, 1963
A 17-acre wilderness tract in the Riverdale section of the Bronx is...unfolding its...secrets to a dozen...children engaged in a...summer science project ... Two (incl. SJR) ... will attempt to trap and band small animals for a population study of the wildlife ...




purchase SJ's pickles
 ... you know: pickles, as in difficult situations –
like what always happens in crime fiction!


April 16, 2012
Page URL: http://www.resourcepages.info/SJR/resc_about.html



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