Rhoda was born in Philadelphia and grew up on the “other” side of the Delaware, in Camden, New Jersey. She conjectures that the large number of characters that people her books and stories is a natural outcome of growing up in a small town neighborhood, surrounded by a close-knit family of nine maternal aunts, uncles, their spouses, and numerous cousins, and a continuous flow of magicians, acrobats, comedians, tap dancers and pit musicians who played the movie-vaudeville house where her father worked as a projectionist/spotlight operator. Rhoda’s first novel, Slowly I Turn, draws on that rich background.

Her interest in writing began after moving to Toronto, Canada in 1968, with her husband and two sons. There she studied creative writing at York University and further pursued that interest at an intensive workshop at Queens University in Kingston with novelist Janette Turner Hospital, and subsequently with novelist Helen Weinzweig who became a mentor.

Rhoda’s first story, Dear Doctor was published in 1994 by Fireweed, followed by stories in Dandelion, Parchment and The Fiddlehead in Canada, Sistersong, Jewish Currents and The Louisville Review in the U.S. She has also been published on the Web.  One of her stories, Aspects of Nature (The Louisville Review) placed as a finalist in The Writers’ Union of Canada 1994 Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers. The Day of the Gorgon (Jewish Currents) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has also published a number of social/political opinion pieces.

Rhoda’s early-on training and career was as a pianist. Her love for music began when she was five; listening to her young aunt (tremulously) singing Listen to the Mockingbird — her fingers “flying”across the keys of an old player piano — she knew then what she wanted: to play, and with as much joy.

She earned a B.S.Mus. from Temple University, Philadelphia (1956), and studied piano with concert artist Maryan Filar, protégé of Walter Gieseking. In 1961 she received a M.Mus. in Performance and Theory from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, under the tutelage of pianist Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts trio. Subsequently, she spent a number of years performing and teaching. Rhoda says that music — all that she learned from these fine instructors and musicians — informs the whole of her writing, its content and style.

It was the early years spent in Bloomington as a student at the university and teaching in rural southern Indiana that provided, decades later, the characters, plot and setting for her second novel, Moon Over Mandalay.

Moon Over Mandalay, a romantic comedy, is published by BuskerBooks, Toronto.