Book Ends: Rosaleen Bertolino,San Miguel Poetry & Prose Cafe Leader

By Bill Wilson

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle - Former Senator and basketball great Bill Bradley.

San Miguel writer Rosaleen Bertolino is one of those authors who had a circuitous route to becoming published. She tried many jobs and says, "I think some of being a writer is temperament (I’m one of those people who always knows the right thing to say two hours too late), and some is desire, and a ton is persistence."

And like many writers she showed creativity at an early age.

"My sisters and friends and I always wrote ‘newspapers’ and ‘plays,’ then we’d run outside and slide down our hillside on pieces of cardboard or swordfight—all of it was just play, which is probably still the best way to learn how to do anything." She continues, "I didn’t think of writing as a calling until college. I was a scholarship student doing my best to graduate with a practical degree where I could make a good living, but the writing and literature classes kept sucking me toward them." Rosaleen received her MA in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and her writing awards include a Marin Arts Council Individual Arts Grant and the 2019 Many Voices Project Prize for Prose.

She moved to San Miguel in 2017, where she is host and director of the reading series, Poetry & Prose Café, sponsored by the San Miguel Literary Sala.

Her debut collection, “The Paper Demon & Other Stories,” was released by New Rivers Press in the fall of 2021 and was a handpicked book at Small Press Distribution. “Thus far, I have just one published book, which came out during the pandemic. I’ve primarily been a writer of short stories and thought it was time for a collection of these. It was both challenging and fun to put together - mostly it was a process of elimination and of those that ‘went together,’" she said.

San Miguel Poetry & Prose Cafe features local and visiting writers once a month, from October to March. The Café is affiliated with the San Miguel Literary Sala. “This year we received nearly 50 submissions, and most of the writers we will be featuring this season have never read at Poetry & Prose Café (meeting at Café Rama) before. Our aim is to feature the best and most exciting work we can find,” she said.

How did she wind up in San Miguel? Rosaleen explains, “A writer friend of mine, Marianne Rogoff, had been visiting for many years and kept insisting that my husband and I would like it. When it came time for us to step away from our day jobs, we realized that we’d always wanted to try living outside of the U.S. We thought we’d give San Miguel a try and then move on. That was eight years ago.”

Her fave part of San Miguel? “I can’t just pick one thing. I love walking everywhere, I love our kind and patient neighbors, I love the traditions, and I love that, generally, the immigrants have come here in particular because they want to be part of an engaged community,” the author notes.

rosaleenbertolino.com Follow San Miguel Poetry & Prose Cafe on Facebook for the latest updates.

FROM THE STACKS

Writers read. That’s a fact. Here are a few selections from my shelves:

The México Reader

The Amazon review says, "The México Reader is a vivid and comprehensive guide to muchos Méxicos—the varied histories and cultures of México. The book covers pre-Columbian times to the present, from the extraordinary power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church to México’s uneven post-revolutionary modernization, from chronic economic and political instability to its rich cultural heritage. It also includes pieces by politicians and foreign diplomats; by literary giants Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes; and by and about revolutionary leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.”

AP Style Book and otherselection for writers

Says Amazon, “Master the style guidelines of newswriting, editing and common usage with this indispensable guide perfect for professional writers and students.  AP style is the gold standard for news writing. With the  stylebook in hand, you can learn how to write and edit with the clarity and professionalism for which their writers and editors are famous. The AP Stylebook will help you master the AP’s rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, word, and numeral usage.”