Rosanna Moseley Gore

Author of "Songs from the Suitcase: Inhabiting an Inheritance", published by Beaten Track Publishing, award-winning independent publisher of diverse fiction and non-fiction.

Rosanna Moseley Gore

After a lifetime working as an acupuncturist and therapist, Rosanna is delighted now to find that she is also a published author! She has always found writing comes naturally to her, but it was only on the death of her parents that the imperative to write a book couldn’t be ignored. “Songs from the Suitcase”, published in June 2024, was written at first in quite a hurry, as memories of her unusual childhood in London (see Biography below) came rushing into her mind. A muddle of languages at home, many non-British traditions, no cohesive immigrant community to belong to, many inherited coping strategies to help navigate through life … as time went on, she began to realise just how important these things were in moulding her world view.

Her book has been described as “a gem”, “unputdownable”, “a blend of humour and plangent pathos” and “all absorbing”.

Having recorded several extract readings for FB and Instagram, people started asking if she was going to do an Audiobook … and yes, work has begun on that!

She is happy to do talks, attend book clubs (in person or virtually), and to spread the word about the importance of treating refugees with humanity.

Rosanna lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband and Labrador, and since May 2022 has hosted a Ukrainian refugee.

ROSANNA'S BIOGRAPHY (as featured on CAMRUSS.COM):

Rosanna grew up in suburban London in the 1960s and 1970s. But her background was very much not the typical English one of that time. Her father escaped from Berlin on a Kindertransport in 1939. Her mother was Russian, born in Harbin in Manchuria in 1923.

Rosanna’s childhood and upbringing were hugely influenced by her half-Russianness, particularly because her beloved grandmother Olga Youhotsky (as her name was anglicised) lived with them, and taught her Russian as well as many, many other things.

In her book Songs from the Suitcase: Inhabiting an Inheritance, Rosanna writes about the gifts, the cultural riches and the inherited trauma that came with this family. What has it meant for how she thinks, what she believes, where she feels she belongs (or not)?

Rosanna Moseley Gore was brought up in London by her Russian mother and grandmother, and her German Jewish father. A Cambridge University Russian Language Prize (the Olga Youhotsky, Catherine Matthews and Irene Gore Prize) is named in memory of her grandmother, aunt and mother. It is awarded annually by the Examiners for Part II of the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos for an outstanding performance in Russian in that examination.

She inherited a huge archive of photographs, letters and documents from both sides of her family – an archive that was too painful to look at, but too precious to destroy, telling stories as it does of lost lives, lost countries and lost loved ones. With her inadequate Russian, Rosanna is beginning the long process of unlocking its secrets and is starting working on a big book about the personalities and characters she is uncovering.

Rosanna studied Geography at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has worked since the late 1980s as an acupuncturist. She practises in Cambridge, lives in Ely, and her book about her unusual childhood and its cultural influences, Songs from the Suitcase: Inhabiting an Inheritance, just came off the press.