Caroline Rosenstone.
Dedication to Rosenstone and handwritten note from former student Natalie Beach in a new book of essays.
Caroline Rosenstone, who created and then for over three decades directed a writing program that turned high schoolers into skilled essayists and critics, died this week at the age of 70.
The cause of death is not officially known, and is believed to have been a “cardiac event,” according to a close friend, Sari Rosenblatt, who is making funeral arrangements.
Update: Rosenstone’s gravesite service will take place on Monday, June 12 at 10 a.m. at Beth El Memorial Park on Warner Street in Hamden.
Rosenstone created the creative writing program in 1985 at the Educational Center for Arts (ECA), the Audubon Street-based regional afternoon high school program. Rosenstone continued to run the program until her retirement in June 2019, recruiting professional writers to join her in conducting college-style workshops to guide high-schoolers in fashioning long-form fiction and nonfiction pieces and supportively critiquing each other’s work.
Natalie Beach, one of Rosenstone’s former students, found Rosenstone’s body Tuesday night when she and her family were paying her a visit at the Autumn Street home where Rosenstone lived since 1979.
The Beach family, who live on the same one-block East Rock street, had arranged the visit with their longtime neighbor Rosenstone so Natalie could present her with a newly published book of essays. Natalie had dedicated the book to Rosenstone, as well as to her sister Charlotte, another ECA alumna-turned-writer, and journalist parents Jennifer Kaylin and Randall Beach.
The family arranged to visit around 6:30. Natalie checked in with Rosenstone by phone a half hour earlier, Randall ten minutes later.
When they arrived, no one answered the front door. They eventually entered through an open back door. They called Rosenstone’s name. Receiving no response, they dialed her number — and heard her phone ring on the first floor.
Finally Natalie and her mom went upstairs, where they found Rosenstone on the floor, unresponsive. Randall called 911. EMTs worked on her for half an hour. Neighbors, some of whom like Rosenstone have lived on the block for decades and grown close, had gathered outside the house.
“I was so waiting for them to say, ‘We’re taking her to the hospital now,’” Jennifer said of the EMTs. “There was a stretcher outside the house waiting. Some of the EMTs were heading out. A guy with a big black bag took the bag and dumped this heavy bag filled with gear on the stretcher. I knew at that point she was not going.”
Natalie’s new book, Adult Drama (HarperCollins), is a collection of personal essays — an art she learned first from Rosenstone’s memoir writing class.
“I had her at ECA for four years and both semesters each year,” said Natalie, who’s now 31. “I don’t think, with the exception of my writer parents, any person was as instrumental with me falling in love with the personal essay. … She took the personal trauma of our lives extremely seriously. I owe so much to her.”
Like Natalie, sister Charlotte recalled Rosenstone’s enthusiastic support for each student’s writing as well as the example she set for reading and listening carefully to other people’s work: “There was a warmth to her workshop that I remember so clearly. As we were reading in class, she was openly cooing and gasping … She had her pen in her hand. She had the print-out in her hand madly circling things and starring as people were reading. I had never had a teacher like that before or ever again — someone who was that clearly delighted by us. It created such a special environment in her class. Every ECA writing department student has such an up when they get to college. Caroline and the other ECA teachers treated us like college students and created that environment. We all had four years.”
“Caroline Rosenstone embodied what was so uniquely wonderful about ECA in general,” New Yorker food critic Hannah Goldfield, who got her start in Rosenstone’s program, wrote in an email message.
“I was 13 years old when I enrolled in the creative writing program that she founded, a fact which stuns me, looking back, because of how seriously I was taken as an aspiring artist, and how seriously it allowed me to take myself. Caroline was a natural-born teacher, with a truly boundless energy, relentlessly cheerful and curious, engaging and encouraging. She introduced me to writers I might never have discovered otherwise and then patiently showed me how to emulate them.
“In the landscape of my high school education, ECA was an ‘elective,’ but because of Caroline and the other teachers under her guidance, creative writing became vocational for me. I owe her so much, and wish I could tell her one more time.”
Another student launched into a writing career by Rosenstone’s program, Michael Jefferson, found his way back to ECA as an instructor. He now teaches Rosenstone’s former personal memoir class.
Tuesday night, when the Beach/Kaylin family was at Rosenstone’s home, Jefferson was at ECA with his students and their parents for a reading of the students’ work, a memorable ritual Rosenstone started.
“I wouldn’t have the found the kind of confidence I had in my work if I didn’t meet Caroline,” Jefferson said. “She was truly passionate about what she was doing. She created the program. She built it to last.” Jefferson plans to give Rosenstone a shout-out when he does a reading of his work at the upcoming Arts & Ideas festival.
Rosenstone, who grew up in Florida, came to New Haven from California, where she earned an MFA degree from San Francisco State University. She wrote and published poems, screenplays, monologues. She sold jokes to Joan Rivers. She taught expository and creative writing at Yale for five years in the early 1980s.
Writer Saul Fussiner recalled participating as a student in a four-person after-ECA pilot writing program for interested students back in the 1984 – 5 school year. They met at Clark’s Diary, Naples Pizza, her Yale office, to “read stories and poems by writers she liked, and then write and read our own work to one another.” They finished the year with an ECA public reading.
“Then she gave us each a mounted poem by Rilke to hang on our walls at home, and a list of books and writers that, based on our work, she thought we would like. My list included Leonard Michaels and Richard Price, both of whom I still love,” Fussiner recalled. “The next year, she founded the department she would lead for 35 years.” Fussiner later joined the faculty and became a beloved anchor of the program.
Former students and colleagues alike spoke of Rosenstone’s keen sense of humor. She also encouraged her students to incorporate humor into their work.
Deborah Cannarella, who became Rosenstone’s personal friend after teaching in the program, said Rosenstone wrote poetry, essays and plays. Rosenstone was always proud of having ensured that professional writers would teach in the program to set a high standard.
Rosenstone is survived by countless friends, colleagues and mentees. Rosenblatt said a funeral is planned for Monday at 10 a.m. at Beth El Memorial Park on Warner Street in Hamden.
I was lucky enough to have Caroline Rosenstone as a teacher for four years in high school. She showed us students so much grace during such a vulnerable time, and believed in us when we certainly didn't believe in ourselves. I would do anything to sit in one of her workshops again. She gave us all many gifts and I wish I could tell her one more time how loved and appreciated she was.