About the Author

Rose Curran grew up in Seattle, Washington and in Oregon. She owes her interest in writing to her journalist father, and her belief in women's rights to her very independent mother who was a teenager before women earned the right to vote, and whose career included preparing industries for the inclusion of women in the workforce during WWII.​

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Rose grew up in a child-friendly neighborhood where corner baseball games occurred nightly from spring to fall.  In her all-girls school, sports were at the heart of social life.  She was a book-lover from an early age, devouring Little Women at least four times by the age of twelve, and, at her father's prompting, reading War and Peace at age fifteen. When admonished to shut off her light at a "too early" bedtime, she managed to read by flashlight or candle light.  (She doesn't recommend this.)

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Rose graduated summa cum laude from Marylhurst College with a major in history.  After an early career teaching French, history, and religion, she earned a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Fordham University in 1983.  Her son, Joel, was born in 1983 and her daughter, Aimee, was born in 1987.  She taught Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Ethics at SUNY Potsdam, Wheeling University, Smith College, Phillips Andover Academy, and Seattle University.  Her non-fiction book, Loving and Working: Reweaving Women’s Public and Private Lives, co-authored with Debra Hull, was published in 1989. A new edition is available on this website. She is also the author of scholarly articles and papers in her academic fields.   ​

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With two young children during her early academic career, the dilemmas of balancing family life and work life were a constant challenge.  It was that struggle that led Rose and her co-author Dr. Hull, to write Loving and Working.  Research for that book, led Rose to discover the Grimké sisters and to resolve to tell their story, and that of their nephews, more fully when her life allowed.  That was only to happen many years later.​

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After her return to Seattle, Rose earned a Masters’ degree in Urban Planning at the University of Washington in 1998, and worked as an urban planning professional for fifteen years.  During that period, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach Urban Planning at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia from 2005 – 2007.  Awarded another Fulbright Fellowship in 2012, she returned to teach at Mekelle University in Tigray, Ethiopia. 

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Finally finding time to write, Rose continues to live and work in her hometown of Seattle, Washington. She intersperses her writing life with playing the cello, playing tennis, traveling, and spending time with her family and friends.