Photo by Anita Scharf
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Welcome!
Thanks for visiting my website. I am an author, developmental editor, writing coach and certified Amherst Writers & Authors workshop leader.
As a writer, reader, educator, and concerned mom, grandma and first-generation American, I believe in the power of story, all of our stories (no matter the form or genre) to reveal truth, heal and inspire. Entertainment and laughter are also good for leavening. Find links to many of my published essays and stories, and information about my latest memoir, GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK, by clicking the AUTHOR link.
Coming soon, a first anthology from Stories on Stage Sacramento (which I co-direct with author Shelley Blanton-Stroud) — Twenty Twenty: 43 stories from a year like no other - edited by Dorothy Rice!
As a writer, reader, educator, and concerned mom, grandma and first-generation American, I believe in the power of story, all of our stories (no matter the form or genre) to reveal truth, heal and inspire. Entertainment and laughter are also good for leavening. Find links to many of my published essays and stories, and information about my latest memoir, GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK, by clicking the AUTHOR link.
Coming soon, a first anthology from Stories on Stage Sacramento (which I co-direct with author Shelley Blanton-Stroud) — Twenty Twenty: 43 stories from a year like no other - edited by Dorothy Rice!
GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK
A Memoir of Self-Acceptance
Otis Books, Seismicity Editions, 2019
. . . believing you're enough, at any age - if not now, when?
I came of age in the San Francisco Bay Area (Mill Valley) in the psychedelic sixties. In my mid-sixties, battling post-retirement, vacated-nest, frumpy-body and settled-marriage depression, it was clear I needed to take stock. After decades struggling to be thin enough, pretty, sexy and successful enough to deserve love and happiness, I devoted a year to cracking the code, a journey that forced me to confront the gnarled roots of female shame.
GRAY is not a self-help book on how to go gray gracefully. Nor is it a manifesto about hair dye, or anything else. Going gray is the metaphor I chose for my journey, a year devoted to dissecting stale expectations, festering wounds and fairy-tale dreams of fame, true love and passionate sex. The book is sad, but also funny. In terms of voice and style, I aspire to a Nora Ephron aesthetic, with generous splashes of Erma Bombeck. (I know, I should be so lucky, but a girl's gotta aspire. And while I'm whispering in your ear, I just want you to know that some of my closest friends dye their hair, including some that really shouldn't, so seriously, it's not even an issue for me.)
The first paperback edition of GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK (Otis Books, June 2019), was a Small Press Distribution top-ten, non-fiction title for three of four quarters. The first printing sold out in nine months. GRAY was, thankfully, reprinted in June 2020. It's also available as an e-book.
GRAY is not a self-help book on how to go gray gracefully. Nor is it a manifesto about hair dye, or anything else. Going gray is the metaphor I chose for my journey, a year devoted to dissecting stale expectations, festering wounds and fairy-tale dreams of fame, true love and passionate sex. The book is sad, but also funny. In terms of voice and style, I aspire to a Nora Ephron aesthetic, with generous splashes of Erma Bombeck. (I know, I should be so lucky, but a girl's gotta aspire. And while I'm whispering in your ear, I just want you to know that some of my closest friends dye their hair, including some that really shouldn't, so seriously, it's not even an issue for me.)
The first paperback edition of GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK (Otis Books, June 2019), was a Small Press Distribution top-ten, non-fiction title for three of four quarters. The first printing sold out in nine months. GRAY was, thankfully, reprinted in June 2020. It's also available as an e-book.
Order a signed copy of GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK for $10.00 (list price $12.95) plus $2.00 postage
Order a signed copy THE RELUCTANT ARTIST for $25.00 (list price $35.95) plus $2.00 postage
Payment via Venmo, PayPal or check - email me to exchange payment and delivery information
Order a signed copy THE RELUCTANT ARTIST for $25.00 (list price $35.95) plus $2.00 postage
Payment via Venmo, PayPal or check - email me to exchange payment and delivery information
Dorothy Rice is the author of two memoirs, the Small Press Distribution best-seller GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK: A Memoir of Self-Acceptance (Otis Books, June 2019), and THE RELUCTANT ARTIST (Shanti Arts, 2015), a hybrid art book/memoir. Her essays, stories and flash have been widely published in literary journals and magazines, including The Rumpus, Hippocampus, Brevity online and The Saturday Evening Post. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, recognized by the regrettably-defunct Glimmer Train Magazine, and long-listed for the 2018 Bath Flash Fiction Award. Her essay "In Photographs" was awarded second place in the 2018 Kalinithi Awards.
Dorothy co-directs (with Copy Boy author Shelley Blanton-Stroud) the nonprofit Stories on Stage Sacramento, a literary performance series that has been bringing authors, actors and audiences together for over ten years. Dorothy also works for 916 INK (a Sacramento-area nonprofit, facilitating creative writing workshops for youth, using the AWA method). She provides developmental editing and coaching services for writers and reads non-fiction submissions for Hippocampus Magazine.
At age 60, following a 30-year career managing solid waste, hazardous waste and water quality programs with the California EPA (her last position was Executive Director of the California State Water Resources Control Board), and raising five children, Rice earned an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside's low-residency program. A San Francisco native, Dorothy now lives in Sacramento with her husband, a pair of frenetic pound puppies, two vegan guinea pig brothers, and within easy visiting distance of her sisters, son and grandchildren.
Dorothy co-directs (with Copy Boy author Shelley Blanton-Stroud) the nonprofit Stories on Stage Sacramento, a literary performance series that has been bringing authors, actors and audiences together for over ten years. Dorothy also works for 916 INK (a Sacramento-area nonprofit, facilitating creative writing workshops for youth, using the AWA method). She provides developmental editing and coaching services for writers and reads non-fiction submissions for Hippocampus Magazine.
At age 60, following a 30-year career managing solid waste, hazardous waste and water quality programs with the California EPA (her last position was Executive Director of the California State Water Resources Control Board), and raising five children, Rice earned an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside's low-residency program. A San Francisco native, Dorothy now lives in Sacramento with her husband, a pair of frenetic pound puppies, two vegan guinea pig brothers, and within easy visiting distance of her sisters, son and grandchildren.
New-ish words, opportunities & events
She's Still In There
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Stories on Stage Sacramento | JUNE 25, 5:00 pm
Tod Goldberg | THE LOW DESERT - GANGSTER STORIES 
“Forget Chinatown, Jake: Tod Goldberg’s The Low Desert finds noir in L.A.’s far outskirts…The Low Desert has plenty of tight, flinty, noir-y sentences…But his style, in the best stories here, is distinguished by a gallows humor featuring men who are just smart enough to work a grift but not bright enough to escape the ensuing trouble.” — Los Angeles Times
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Last Updated - May 31, 2021
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AN AMAZING TEACHING RESOURCE
Perfect for use at any level—beginner to advanced--Brevity‘s 20th anniversary anthology The Best of Brevity features brief memoir, narrative, lyric essays, literary journalism, hermit crab essays, hybrid essays, and more.
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