About Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum

Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum was born and raised in New York, where she studied  modern dance and choreography.  The seed of her debut novel, A Day of Small Beginnings, was planted during the months she traveled alone in Europe at the age of eighteen. Her shock at seeing a Paris street lined with plaques commemorating the World War II destruction of a Jewish community grew into a lifelong interest in Jewish history and theology, an interest completely at odds with her secular upbringing. It led her from Goddard College to New York University, where she majored in Religion and Philosophy, and to a graduate year of study in International Relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Upon returning to the United States, she moved to Los Angeles to work in the Press and Information Division of the Israeli Consulate.

In 1983, after graduating from Loyola Law School, Lisa litigated a number of  constitutional cases related to church-state issues in California. She later left the practice of law to produce cultural programs for a cable television network. Two years after her first child was born, she took a creative writing class at UCLA and found that her sensibilities about writing fiction felt much like creating dance – a choreography with words.

In the mid-1990s Lisa traveled to Poland with her in-laws, who are Holocaust survivors. Their experiences, particularly in the family’s hometown, inspired and informed much of A Day of Small Beginnings.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Walter Lipsman, her daughters Ariana and Maya, a dog, two cats and up the road, her daughter’s horse - whose presence in their lives is as mystifying as it is magical. She is also the current president of the Santa Monica Synagogue.

A Day of Small Beginnings was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.