Alan Rosenus’ General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans received the Western Writers of America Spur Award for the best biography of the year as well as the Sonoma County Historical Society’s Editor’s Award.
While at Brown University, Rosenus studied writing with novelist John Hawkes, and graduated in English with honors, Phi Beta Kappa. He served as Congressman James Roosevelt’s secretary and speech writer, and afterwards, obtained an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State College where he worked with poet Robert Duncan. The University of Oregon awarded him a Doctor of Arts in American Literature, and he then established the Urion Press, publishing a number of 19th century works including Joaquin Miller’s Life Amongst the Modocs and Jeff C. Riddle’s The Indian History of the Modoc War. Rosenus also edited Joaquin Miller’s short stories, journals, and drawings in Selected Writings of Joaquin Miller. The National Endowment for the Arts gave his Urion Press a grant to publish an illustrated book of Rosenus’ short fiction, Devil Stories.
He has contributed to the Northwest Review, New America, The California Historical Quarterly, The United States and Mexico at War, Fifty Western Writers, Assembling, and Western American Literature.
Rosenus has taught at San Francisco State College (now University), the College of Marin, and Coe College in Cedar Rapids.
The following books are available from Urion Press:
