Rosa Turner Knapp
biography
Latina writer Rosa Turner Knapp is the author of five published novels, assorted short stories, articles and poems, a sold short script, and several feature-length screenplays which have led to six option deals with Hollywood producers.
Her work has been released in multiple formats, including trade paperback, mass market paperback, magazine, electronic download, disk and CD-Rom, and marketed in stores and on the Internet in the United States and overseas by presses large and small, such as Kensington Books of New York and Jacobyte Books of Australia.
In late 2005, Rosa's (2000 USA) category romance novel Real Romance appeared in Portuguese translation in Brazil as Quero Ser Feliz!, after having seen Danish translation in Denmark as Romanbladet in early 2002.
Rosa's fiction has obtained positive commentary from online and print reviewers, garnered six literary awards, and prompted radio and print interviews with the Swiss, German and Austrian press as well as invitations to speak locally at Barnes & Noble and the Virginia Festival of the Book.
Rosa Turner Knapp writes men's fiction (action/adventure, thrillers), screenplays and poetry under her full name and women's romantic comedy as Rosa Knapp. Please note that only works referenced on this Web site were authentically written by Rosa.
The youngest of five children, Rosa experienced exposure to the Spanish culture via her Puerto Rican mother, Irma Aboy Ferrer Turner (first cousin to actor Jose Ferrer), as well as through the influence of her late father, Dr. Elbert Daymond Turner, Jr., a Spanish PhD., university professor/administrator and global authority on the Early Americas period.
Rosa crafted her first poem at age six, then later drafted, directed and starred in original stage plays for her elementary school, prior to dabbling in high school acting and working in movie theaters throughout high school and college to earn pocket cash. She first considered writing as a vocation at fourteen when her prep school headmaster (an English PhD. who'd read Rosa's poetry) urged her to pursue a literary career. Despite protests from her parents, who believed that course a sure path to poverty and pain, Rosa realized an important seed had been planted and secretly hoped to someday find others to share her early advocate's faith.
After studying abroad and contributing articles to the "International Perspectives" column of her college campus weekly, Rosa graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in Spanish, then managed health, computer and housing contracts for the US Department of State, Agency for International Development in Washington, DC and El Salvador. Some hair-raising experiences in war-torn Central America inspired Rosa's first novel, the international spy thriller Force of Fire, the writing of which was not undertaken until ten years later.
While that novel begins in the fictional country of Costa Negra, Force of Fire is set primarily in Rosa's ancestral homeland Spain, where she lived on two separate occasions. Rosa spent her junior college year in Seville, where she still has relatives, and her freshman college summer with her parents in Madrid while her father was doing research. During that first trip, and thanks to her dad's work and mom's contacts, Rosa was treated along with her parents to a private Audience with their majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at the Royal Palace in Madrid.
Apart from becoming fluent in Spanish, Rosa studied Latin and Italian and traveled throughout Iberia and continental Europe, and to northern Africa, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, all experiences which contributed to her development as a writer. She currently teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in Albemarle County Public Schools and continues to write. In 2007, Rosa looks forward to her inclusion in the Blue Ridge Anthology, further progress with screen projects, and the creation of more poetry.
rosaturnerknapp.com