Roslyn Bernstein

Roslyn Bernstein is Professor Emerita of journalism and creative writing at Baruch College, CUNY. She is the founding director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program at Baruch College and was the chair of the Department of Journalism and The Writing Professions for 15 years. She was also the founding editor of Dollars and $ense, Baruch’s prize-winning magazine, now online. For several years, she also served as a faculty advisor to the College Development Office, helping shape various major gifts to the college. When she retired, students and colleagues created an annual Roz Bernstein Reporting Award and the Sidney Harman Foundation established the Harman Foundation Creative Writing Awards in her honor.

She was a recipient of the College Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Service in 1994. Bernstein holds degrees in Political Science from Brandeis University and a MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from New York University.

At Baruch, she taught journalistic writing, feature article writing, arts and culture reporting, and her favorite course, The Arts in New York City, offered for students in the Macaulay Honors College. Bernstein also taught feature article writing and travel writing in the Craig Newmark CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Bernstein has reported on arts and culture from around the globe for such print publications as the New York Times, Newsday, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, Parents, ARTnews, and the Columbia Journalism Review, and for such online publications as Tablet, Art slant, Tikkun, Huffington Post, and Guernica. Her fifteen Guernica stories include “Frank Moore’s Dark Thoughts: Toxic Beauty,” and  “Everything Grows: Inside Wangechi Mutu’s A Fantastic Journey.”

She is the author of five books: Boardwalk Stories, (Blue Eft Press), a collection of fourteen linked tales set in the years 1950 to 1970; Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), a collection of her arts and culture reporting; the co-author with the architect Shael Shapiro of Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, an arts and culture history of SoHo, published by the Jonas Mekas Foundation; Sleeping With My Eyes Open, a poetry collection; and the novel, The Girl Who Counted Numbers (Amsterdam Publishers), which was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Council Fiction Competition and was included in the 100 Best Kirkus Indies in 2023.

Her website is roslynbernstein.com and her email is rbernst662@gmail.com