Rosina Lippi Green
just wants to tell stories

By Nicole Yormark

A young girl opens the door after the doorbell rings. Without asking, she calls for her mother, and Lippi Green appears. She is average height, and wears casual pants and a T-shirt. The cat races in the door.

She has three cats. One is named Jane, the other George and the third is named Cleo. Jane is short for Jane Austen one of the greatest women writer's known. George is short for George Elliot, and the third is not short for Cleopatra it is not short for anything, just Cleo. Her daughter, Elisabeth, named the last one, Cleo.

The names for the cats are fitting since Lippi Green is an award-winning writer. The former creative writing professor at Western Washington University won the Pen/Hemingway award in April for her novel Homestead. She continues to write novels based on historic facts and literary characters.

Homestead takes place in the mountains of Austria. It is a fictional account of women in a small village from the year 1909 to 1979.

She said that no one or nothing really inspired her to write. "I think the drive to tell stories," she said was the inspiration to write. Her drive to tell stories made her write them down as early as elementary school, and continue through her adult life.

Lippi Green, 43, did not originally major in writing or English; her interest was in linguistics. She received a B.A. in linguistics at the University of Illinois at the Chicago campus. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at Princeton University in linguistics as well.

Pam Hardman, a former colleague from Western and friend of Lippi Green, said that she was multi-talented and generous with her writing talents. Hardman said that Lippi Green usually helps others with their problems with writing. "She is very generous with what she knows," Hardman said.

Lippi Green spent four years in Austria while in her late teens, going to a teacher's college, and studying linguistics. She was absorbing the isolated culture, which inspired her to write her award-winning novel, Homestead.

Lippi Green worked at the University of Michigan, for about 10 years before coming to Western Washington University two years ago. There she enjoyed teaching linguistics. She said, "I always found it rewarding."

When asked why she left Michigan she said that she wanted to live in the Northwest and received an opportunity from Western. She wanted to teach creative writing as well as keep linguistics alive. "There was a long period where I could not indulge it (writing)," she said.

Lippi Green quit Western for reasons she could not disclose. However, she plans to stay in Bellingham and write.

Probably Lippi Green's biggest trouble with writing was trying to be heard. She had a publicity problem with her books even though her publisher tried extremely hard to reach many people about her books.

"It was a struggle early on to get seen ... Obviously I caught the attention of the Pen/Hemingway Committee," she said.

She was surprised when she won the Pen/Hemingway award, but she did receive some publicity when she won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award."It received some good critical reviews. I did not think it would go anywhere," she said.

This award brought her publicity and attention to the Pen/Hemingway committee.

The Pen/Hemingway award is handed out to first novelist for outstanding fiction. She uses pen names when writing. She used Rosina Lippi for linguistics. She used the name Rosina Lippi Green for her novel Homestead. She used Sara Donati for Into the Wilderness, because Homestead and Into the Wilderness came out close together and she does not want her readers to expect the same type of writing because they are completely different, Lippi Green said.

Now, Lippi Green is a full time writer at home. She wakes up in the morning and writes for a couple of hours. She does errands or relaxes, and then writes off and on throughout the day.

She said that she probably writes about four to six hours a day. She brings a computer with her wherever she goes, just in case she comes up with a good idea.

For Into the Wilderness, Lippi Green took a male character from a Daniel Boone novel and Jane Austen female character, and put them together on the New York pioneer in the 1700s. She finished the sequel to Into the Wilderness, and is researching for her next novel.