One NewSouth author remembered another this past month. Syndicated newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson called her former Auburn University English professor Charles Rose “vibrant and true” in her weekly column; Rose died June 6, 2011 at the age of 80.

Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated columnist and author of Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir, took Rose’s creative writing course at Auburn in the 1970s. In her column “The Outline of a Man,” Johnson recalled how Rose (whose students called him “Charlie,” not Dr. Rose) held office hours at a local hamburger joint, and taught writing often by reading to his students. Johnson recalled:

I remember to this day tips he gave me about dialogue. Turns out a lot of dialogue is “understood,” and doesn’t have to be “expressed.” He improved my short stories with a few deft marks of his pen and a quiet suggestion or two. I’d leave that restaurant thinking I might have some kind of future with words, or at least some kind of future. And the ability to give an insecure kid that feeling might be the best definition of teaching that there is. 

Later Johnson would learn that, as well as writing short stories and screenplays, Rose was a talented jazz musician and dedicated hospice volunteer. He recounted his volunteer experiences in his book In the Midst of Life: A Hospice Volunteer’s Story. Rose’s book of short stories, A Ford in the River, is forthcoming in July from NewSouth Books.

Read Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s full column, “The Outline of a Man.”

Charles Rose’s and Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s books are both available direct from NewSouth Books or your favorite local bookseller.

Writer and teacher Charles Rose died this past week in Auburn, Alabama. He taught literature at Auburn University for thirty-four years, and was the author of numerous short stories, screenplays, and the memoir In the Midst of Life: A Hospice Volunteer’s Story. His collection of short stories, A Ford in the River, is forthcoming from NewSouth Books.

The Alabama State Council on the Arts awarded Rose a fellowship in 2004; in 1999, Rose served as a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. He is also a past Hospice Volunteer of the Year.

The Southern Humanities Review wrote that in In the Midst of Life, Rose “masterfully blends poetic prose with journalistic detail. He writes about death — the inevitable, the equalizer — but does so in a way that he demystifies its power to destroy and emphasizes instead its ability to forge the least likely connections among people, reminding us in the process to celebrate the magic surrounding even the most ordinary lives.”

Long-time friend and colleague Jay Lamar, director of Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University, attended the memorial service for Rose. “What impressed me,” Lamar said, “was how beautifully Charlie’s sense of humor, brilliant mind, and genuine human kindness were conveyed. Family, students, colleagues, and his many friends shared as many laughs as tears, and Charlie would not have had it any other way.”

Our condolences to Charles Rose’s family and friends on his loss. Contributions can be made in Rose’s honor to the American Cancer Society.

A short story by Charles Rose, author of In the Midst of Life, was recently featured in the Alabama Literary Review.

���Vigil��� is about a Southern woman, Shirley Carmichael, who sells life insurance and lives with her terminally ill husband, Wiley. The story tells of the sacrifices that Shirley makes while reconciling how to be both a good mother and a steadfast caregiver to her husband.

Charles Rose has said the story was inspired by his own experience working with the terminally ill as a Hospice volunteer.

For the full story, see the Spring 2007 edition of The Alabama Literary Review, available from Amazon.com or by contacting Ed Hicks at 334-670-3971.

The Alabama Literary Review is a state literary medium representing local and national submissions and is published annually.

The most recent issue of Auburn University’s Southern Humanities Review examines Charles Rose’s hospice volunteer memoir In the Midst of Life, calling it “stunning in its subtle juxtapositions of the sublime and the mundane, the ethereal and the earthly.” From the review:

Throughout [his] work, Rose brings inanimate objects to life while watching life seep out of the living. Rose masterfully blends poetic prose with journalistic detail. He writes about death–the inevitable, the equalizer–but does so in a way that he demystifies its power to destroy and emphasizes instead its ability to forge the least likely connections among people, reminding us in the process to celebrate the magic surrounding even the most ordinary lives.

Charles Rose taught English at Auburn University for thirty-four years. A native of Indiana, he holds degrees from Vanderbilt and the University of Florida and has published many short stories and articles. He is a past Hospice Volunteer of the Year, and in 2004 he was awarded an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship for literary arts/fiction. In the Midst of Life is his first book.

In the Midst of Life is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

An interview with Charles Rose, author of the NewSouth book In the Midst of Life, is now available for download. As part of the Alabama Arts Radio series from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, Randy Shoults interviews Rose about his writing career and his new novel, including a reading from In the Midst of Life.

In the Midst of Life is a moving, evocatively described narrative of the patients and caregivers Charles Rose encountered as a hospice volunteer. It is also a perceptive account of his own journey into the world of the dying–a journey that in the end brings him, and us, more deeply and compassionately into the transitory world of our own lives. It is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

Listen to the interview with Charles Rose at the Alabama Arts Radio series website, and search for Charles Rose.