| Michael J. Rosen, the writer of As the Tables Turn, is the author, editor, and illustrator of a wide variety of more than 65 books, including works for both adults and children. Many of his efforts involve philanthropic volumes to benefit Share Our Strength’s fight to end childhood hunger, on whose board of directors he has served for more than 14 years. He created 6 books whose profits benefit the organization, including two recent cookbooks, Cooking from the Heart: 100 Great Chefs Share Recipes They Cherish, and Baking from the Heart: Our Nation's Best Bakers Share Recipes They Cherish for The Great American Bake Sale®, which include more than 150 of the nation’s most respected chefs. In 2005, Share Our Strength presented him with its first Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing his creativity, leadership, and inspiration in the fight to create a hunger-free generation in America.
In 1990, Rosen founded a granting program, The Company of Animals Fund, which offered support to animal welfare agencies providing emergency or ongoing care to companion animals from the profits of seven books and two touring illustration exhibits. Over 11 years of grant-making, the Fund awarded $360,000 to 100 humane societies across the country.
Rosen’s many children’s books, such as A School for Pompey Walker, Bonesy and Isabel, and Elijah’s Angel, have received many distinguished citations, among them, the National Jewish Book Award, the inaugural Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Once Upon a World Book Award for the best children’s book that promotes diversity and tolerance, the Ohioana Library Career Citation in children’s literature, and The Southside Settlement House’s Arts Freedom Award. Rosen is involved working with teachers and children at literature conferences and schools throughout the country, sharing his passion for literature and the creative process. Recent books include BALLS!, a Junior Literary Guild Feature Selection, The 60-Second Encyclopedia (featured in Arby’s kids’ meals through November), Fishing with Dad, and two young-adult novels, The Blessing of the Animals, and ChaseR: A Novel in E-mails.
His poetry for adults has been collected in three volumes, A Drink at the Mirage (Princeton University Press, 1985), Traveling in Notions: The Stories of Gordon Penn (University of S. Carolina Press, 1996), and Telling Things (Harcourt Brace, 1997). His work has been supported by three grants from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, as well as grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He received his MFA in poetry from Columbia University in 1981.
Rosen’s own illustrations have been featured in a cookbook he co-authored with Sharon Reiss, Midnight Snacks: 150 Easy and Enticing Alternatives to Standing by the Freezer Spooning Ice Cream from the Carton; in magazines such as Gourmet and The New Yorker; and in various children’s books. He lives in Central Ohio, where he served for nearly 20 years as literary director of The Thurber House, a cultural center in James’s restored boyhood home in Columbus. During his tenure there, Rosen edited four volumes of James Thurber’s work. He continues to work in the field of humor as editor of a biennial, Mirth of a Nation, whose third volume May Contain Nuts was released in the fall of 2004.
His website is www.fidosopher.com.
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