The Pink Zone

Rosemary Daniell is not technically history because she is alive and well but because she has already made a significant mark on our world I thought I would go ahead and include her. Rosemary Daniell  was born in Atlanta in 1935. She dropped out of high school and married an army cook. Because he was abusive she divorced him and remarried an architect, Sidney Daniell, in 1956. She had two daughters with Sidney. They divorced in 1968 she married Jonathan Coppelman, also a writer in 1969. She and Coppelman divorced in 1976.

In the midst of this chaotic life in the late 1950s and early ’60s she found her calling. She took a continuing education at Emory University and fell in love with poetry. The gods of poetry visited her and she began to write poetry Along the way she met James Dickey, the Southern writer of poems and the famed book Deliverance, at a writers’ workshop and was influenced by him. But she was to find herself drawn to the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton too.

The year 1975 was a pivotal year Daniell. Her mother committed suicide and her alcoholic father died. But it was also the year her first poetry book was published ‘A Sexual Tour of the Deep South.’ This became a feminist must-read, as she took on subjects not usually discussed in poetry and the South. This was followed by her second book of poetry ‘The Feathered Trees.’ After two more poetry books she wrote the first of two memoirs: Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex and Suicide In the Deep South. This book won the 1999 Palimpsest Prize for as the most requested out-of-print book. Her next memoir was Sleeping With Soldiers. Her memoirs again broke ground as she explored subjects of which ladies were not expected to speak.  It is said by some critics that they were a forerunner of the current memoir trend.

She would have been a literary icon with these works but what she did next was start a movement with her book on the subject of writing. She developed a reputation as one of the best writing coaches in the country. She wrote two books on the subject. These books were The Woman Who Spilled Words All Over Herself: Writing And Living Tthe ZONA ROSA Way and Secrets Of The ZONA ROSA: How Writing (And Sisterhood) Change Women’s Lives.

Zona Rosa was the name of the first writer’s group she formed in Savannah thirty years ago. She invited four women to meet once a month to talk about writing and life at her little apartment.  Today, thousands of women, and some men, have participated in Zona Rosa workshops; Rosemary leads Zona Rosa workshops and retreats all over the country, as well as in Europe, where they are dubbed "Pajama Parties for Grown-Up Girls with Smarts". Over 150 Zona Rosans, and counting, have become published authors. Among these are Cassandra King, author of THOSE SAME SWEET GIRLS, and other popular mainstream novels; John Berendt, who was part the Savannah Zona Rosa group while writing his multi-best-seller, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL; best-selling New York Times author Bruce Feiler, who consulted with Rosemary before publishing his first book, LEARNING TO BOW; and Eric Haney, who took part in the Atlanta Zona Rosa group while writing INSIDE DELTA FORCE, which became the basis for the television series, "The Unit."

Today there are SUB ROSA, or Secret of the Rose peer groups  forming all over the States. ZONA ROSA THE MUSICAL, written by Zona Rosans Pamella Smith and Kathleen McGuire, is now looking for a theatrical home. Daniell’s  own ZONA ROSA THE SIT COM is in the works.

Along the way she has received many awards, among them two NEA grants, one in poetry, another in fiction. She has reviewed books for The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and been published in such magazines as Mother Jones, Harper’s Bazaar, Self, Travel and Leisure, New York Woman, and other magazines, as well as many literary publications. She has also appeared on a number of national radio and TV shows. In 2008, she was given a Governor’s Award in the Humanities for her impact on the state of Georgia. She was profiled in Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-75. She has become a literary feminist icon and yet she still is pushing ahead into new lands.

And what does Zona Rosa mean: the ‘pink zone’. Rosemary Daniell definitely deserves credit for opening up the pink zone for all to enjoy.

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