Rose Mary Prosen

Prosen was born to Slovene parents who emigrated from Lower Carniola in present-day Slovenia to Newburgh, Ohio, a village annexed by the city of Cleveland. She worked as professor of English at the Cuyahoga Community College at Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

As an essayist she published several articles, including the 1974 "Ethnic Literature" – Of Whom and for Whom.^[1] She also published four collections of poetry, the 1971 Poems, 1976 O The Ravages, and two collections in 1980, Apples and Thank You Michelangelo.^[2]

Prosen won the 1975 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Prize.^[3]

Her short memoir Looking Back: Newburgh won the first prize for the 1976 Growing Up Slavic in America competition.^[4]