Scott Rosin grew up in Redondo Beach in the Fifties and Sixties when it was a sleepy beach town. At age 11, he survived a near-fatal illness that lasted most of 1959. Besides keeping him bedridden during a long recovery, the illness afforded him an opportunity to read a year’s worth of classical and modern literature–Homeric sagas, Norse and Greek mythology, Renaissance poets, Dumas, Dickens, Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and McCullers, and poets Cummings, Ferlinghetti and Marquis.
Rosin’s brush with mortality left him with a lifelong habit of embracing challenges. In the summer of 1960, he began surfing. In 1971, he left the crowded So-Cal burbs and beaches for rural Oregon. He stayed. As he puts it, “I always loved the woods as much as the beach. Anything to do with trees. I fought wildfire, became a smokejumper, worked as a faller, tree planter, and logger, and for the last 27 years of my working life owned a tree-service business. If it had anything to do with manual labor, trees, or lower back pain, I’ve done it.”
Somehow, Rosin also managed to write. His first break was his affiliation with Red Octopus Theatre Company in Newport, OR, where three of his one-act plays were produced along with two full-length plays. He was also co-author of a book and lyrics for a full-length musical based on “The Gift” by O. Henry, also produced. Some of his surf poems appeared in “Pacific Longboard Magazine” in the Nineties, and some of his firefighting poems were published in “Wildland Firefighter Magazine” during the same period. “Smokey and Kit,” included in this book, was originally published in the late Chris Bystrom’s “The Glide, the Renaissance of LongBoard Surfing.”
Rosin now lives on his working tree farm high in the Coast Range of Oregon. He is currently writing two novels set in the Pacific Northwest.
Writing by Scott
Novels in Progress
- “The Book of Joe,” a novel about an extraterrestrial invasion of a small rural community in Oregon
- a fact-based novel about D.B. Cooper, the only person to commit an unsolved act of air piracy in US history.
Published Narrative Poetry
- “Turn Your Back on the Shore,” my newest book, a collection of surf-poetry collection
- “Smokey and Kit,” published in Chris Bystrom’s “The Glide: Longboarding and the Renaissance of Modern Surfing”
- Numerous other accessible narrative poems
Stageplays Performed
- “The Gift,” a full-length musical with original songs; an adaptation of an O. Henry story
- “Oh, Dragon!” a children’s play inspired by “The Reluctant Dragon” by Kenneth Crahame
- A comedy-drama about a community theatre group putting on their own production of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”
- “Monday is Wash Day,” “A Potential Merger,” and ““Love and the Left Side of the Brain,” all one-act plays about relationships
Scott Rosin, Author 