Norman Rosten (January 1, 1913 â March 7, 1995) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist.
Rosten was born to a Polish Jewish family in New York City and grew up in Hurleyville, New York. He graduated from Brooklyn College and New York University, and the University of Michigan, where he met Arthur Miller. Each won the Avery Hopwood Award.
In 1979, Brooklyn's borough president Howard Golden named Rosten as the poet laureate of Brooklyn.
Among Rosten's work outside the field of poetry, he wrote the libretto for Ezra Laderman's opera Marilyn. He also wrote the screenplay for Sidney Lumet's film Vu du Pont, adapting Miller's A View from the Bridge. He visited Mickey Knox in Rome.
Rosten was a poetry consultant for Simon and Schuster Publishers. It was through that role that he came to know fellow poet Andrew Glaze. The two became friends and Glaze later dedicated his book I am the Jefferson County Courthouse to Rosten.
His work appeared in The New Yorker.
Rosten married his wife, Hedda Rowinski, in 1938. Together they had one child, daughter Patricia, in 1946. He resided in Brooklyn after college. The Rostens knew Marilyn Monroe for the last seven years of her life.
Rosten died in New York City from congestive heart failure on March 7, 1995, at the age of 81.