It was a course of study that took me eleven years part time, while I raised my family and ran my interior design business. I was in my mid-fifties, just after I’d graduated with a B.A. Rita will present her talk, “Writing & Publishing in the Modern Age, or So You’ve Written a Book Now What?” at the Limmud Conference of Jewish Learning in February. She is presently the facilitator of the Self-published Authors’ Roundtable that meets every month at the Manhasset Library in Manhasset, Long Island. Her short stories appeared in many literary journals including The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iconoclast, The MacGuffin and Passager before they were included in the collection, Alterations (Penumbra 2013). The event of its publication was the feature article in Newsday’s Act II section in July, 2012 called, “Published & Proud,” followed by “Rita Steps Out,” featured in the Times Ledger, August, 2012. Lily Steps Out (Penumbra 2012) is her first novel. Her practice includes fiction and non-fiction. Retiring her thirty-five year career as an interior designer-she was also the coordinator of the Interior Design/Decorating Certificate Program at Queensborough Community College, and taught several courses in the program–Rita is devoting herself to her writing.

Rita is an author, teacher and lecturer on the decorative arts. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights. Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the three hundred and fifty-seventh, is of short story author and novelist Rita Plush.

Lily Steps Out by Rita Plush