Gretchen Roselli

Memoirist💠 Essayist 💠Playwright

Exploring reinvention, ambition, relationships, and the humor hiding in life’s messier moments. Former performer, teacher, perpetual handstander, devoted dog lover.

Gretchen Roselli is a Colorado-based writer and playwright whose work has appeared in The Colorado Sun, OnStage CO, bioStories and Red Rock Life. Her essay “Culture Shock a Mile High” is forthcoming in Does It Have Pockets. She is currently seeking representation for her memoir, Glitter, Grit, and Grace.

About

I’ve spent most of my life performing. Dancing, acting, singing, modeling—and, these days, performing completely improvised songs to my dog. He is a captive audience.I grew up dancing and eventually opened a performing arts school in New York, where I spent twenty years teaching, choreographing and producing shows. I loved watching students thrive—and the extraordinary amount of fun we had along the way.Now I write memoir, creative nonfiction and plays, fueled by an endless fascination with people: what they say, what they don’t say, what they’re afraid of and why we make spectacularly bad decisions while convincing ourselves they’re perfectly reasonable. I can overanalyze a two-minute conversation for an impressive amount of time, yet I’m equally happy being completely ridiculous. That contradiction finds its way into my writing: serious subjects, complicated people and the peculiar way tragedy can become funny once enough time has passed.

Amore. I sing to him. I dance for him. He has yet to request an encore.

I’m drawn to stories about reinvention and women who refuse to accept that at a certain age we’re supposed to become less interesting. I have no intention of cooperating with that particular idea.I run, lift weights, choreograph my own dance workouts, listen to audiobooks, travel (the Caribbean, please), foster dogs and do handstands in places where respectable adults generally remain upright.I still get an unreasonable high from pirouettes and cartwheels.

Respectable adults generally remain upright. I have other plans.

Contact

Questions, comments, dog stories? I’d love to hear from you.