About
Chuck Rosenthal
Chuck Rosenthal was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He attended Allegheny College, Bowling Green State University, SUNY Buffalo, and the University of California, Davis, where he earned several advanced degrees in English, Sociological Theory and Philosophy. He earned a Ph.D. in English and American literature with emphasis in Creative Writing and Narrative Theory from the University of Utah.
Rosenthal is the author of fourteen novels, including The Loop Trilogy: Loop’s Progress, Experiments with Life and Deaf, and Loop’s End; Elena of the Stars; Avatar Angel, the Last Novel of Jack Kerouac; My Mistress Humanity; The Heart of Mars; Coyote O’Donohughe’s History of Texas; Ten Thousand Heavens; The Legend of La Diosa; You Can Fly, a Sequel to the Peter Pan Tales; The Hammer, the Sickle and the Heart, Trotsky and Kahlo in Mexico; and Let’s Face the Music and Dance: a Hybrid Novel. He has also published a memoir, Never Let Me Go, and a travel book, Are We Not There Yet? Travels in Nepal, North India, and Bhutan (Magic Journalism), as well as a second book of Magic Journalism, West of Eden: A Life in 21st Century Los Angeles. Rosenthal has published two books of experimental poetry, Tomorrow You’ll Be One of Us (sci-fi poems with Gail Wronsky and Gronk, illustrator) and The Shortest Farewells Are the Best (noir poems, also with Gail Wronsky). Together, they also wrote and directed the sci-fi play, People of Earth, This Is Your Last Warning, which was performed at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. Additionally, Rosenthal has written a book of animal philosophy, How the Animals Around You Think: The Semiotics of Animal Cognition.
He’s published in numerous journals, and read and lectured at universities and on television and radio throughout the U.S. as well as in Mexico, Argentina, India and England.
Rosenthal first moved to northern California in 1978 and has lived in Los Angeles since 1986. He began riding horses in 1994 at the age of 43 and purchased his first horse, Jackie O, an Arab-Thoroughbred bay mare, in 1995. She died on January 17, 2009, at the age of 22. Ten Thousand Heavens is a novel about Jackie O. He rode his next horse, La Femme Nikita, a Buckskin Morgan, for ten years. He tried to ride six days a week.
Rosenthal played basketball in college and learned to surf upon arriving in LA. He crossed Canada and the U.S. on a 400 Suzuki in 1982, but recently stopped motorcycling. Besides horseback riding he enjoys tennis, running with his dogs, and swimming. He loves cats.
Rosenthal lives in Topanga Canyon with his partner, the poet Gail Wronsky. Their daughter, Marlena Dali, moved to Sydney, Australia, in August 2010 to pursue a career in performance art.