Harriet Rohmer

“Ms. Rohmer is the real thing: a sensitive, intelligent, extravagantly talented and imaginative writer.”
––Cristina Garcia
(Dreaming in Cuban)

“Goddamn lovely writing!”
––Dorothy Allison
(Bastard Out of Carolina)

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“Harriet Rohmer, the innovative publisher of Children’s Book Press, has been a leading force in the creation of multicultural literature for children.”
––Multicultural Review

One of the people most responsible for the high standards of (multicultural books) is Harriet Rohmer, founder of Children’s Book Press in San Francisco.”
––Newsweek

I have two new works of fiction: Last of the Refuge Cities and Alligator Work

I am also the Founder and former Publisher/Executive Director of Children’s Book Press, the award-winning publisher of bilingual and multicultural picture books in San Francisco. My books have won over 100 major awards, including the American Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Ezra Jack Keats Award. Many of the books have become classics—Family Pictures / Cuadros de familia, stories told to me by artist Carmen Lomas Garza, has sold close to half a million copies.

I loved publishing picture books for children (as a matter of fact I have a hot new series in the works). But I had another dream too—I wanted to write fiction for adults. During the days at Children’s Book Press, I helped authors and artists write about their wonderful grandmothers and extended families. Back at home, I was writing a story about a fictionalized version of my own grandmother, who wasn’t so wonderful. I called that story “I Know What Made My Grandma So Mean,” and it turned out to be the opening chapter of my novel, Last of the Refuge Cities.

I was invited to be an artist-in-residence in Everglades National Park. On the trail of stories for my second novel, Alligator Work, I visited with old time alligator hunters out in the glades and rode around the park with a law enforcement ranger who told me about poachers and smugglers, lovers and cheaters—and regular people who do crazy things. “Folks leave their common sense behind when they come to the Everglades,” he said.

I’ve been a salsa dancer and a swimmer, a performer in the San Francisco Carnival, and a volunteer with San Francisco Suicide Prevention. I’ve studied Midrash (a traditional form of Jewish commentary on the Torah) and hitchhiked through Soviet-era Poland in an apricot truck. I’ve worked in New York City as a film writer; and in Paris, France, as a translator/editor at Agence France-Presse and a staffer in the film unit of UNESCO. I experienced my first taste of scandal as a Congressional Aide in Washington D.C.