Rosalyn Story

Rosalyn Story, author of Sing Her Name, is a professional classical violinist, journalist, and author of both fiction and non-fiction. She plays violin in the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Fort Worth, TX, and divides her time between performing and writing about the visual and performing arts.

Sing Her Name, a novel based loosely on the life of the 19th century black diva Sissieretta Jones, is Story’s fourth book. Her articles have appeared in numerous magazines including Essence, Stagebill (the magazine of Lincoln Center), The Crisis (the magazine of the NAACP) and Opera News. Her first book, And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert, the first comprehensive book on the history of black women in opera, was the inspiration for the PBS documentary Aida’s Brothers and Sisters: Black Voices in Opera. Her first novel, More Than You Know, was published in 2004. Her novel Wading Home, set in post-Katrina New Orleans, was an Essence magazine book club pick and “recommended read,” and was also a 2011 nominee for the Hurston Wright Foundation Legacy Award. In 2012, Wading Home was chosen by Clemson University (Clemson, SC) as the “common read” book and was distributed to 3,500 freshmen and new students. In August 2012, she presented Wading Home before an assembly of all freshmen and new students at Littlejohn Coliseum on the campus.

In 2012, Story was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame by the Friends of the Fort Worth Public Library in Fort Worth, TX. In 2014, she received a $40,000 MPower artists' grant from the Sphinx Organization based in Detroit, MI to produce Wading Home: An Opera of New Orleans, based on her novel. With a cast, orchestra, and chorus of internationally-recognized artists, it was performed in Dallas and New Orleans, and in Port Elizabeth, Stellenbosch, and Pretoria, South Africa.