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Eddie Roth Reader

The

Short Fiction
(& occasional poetry, essays, fragments, reprises, and other minor inventions)
About Eddie Roth

Eddie Roth came to fiction writing later in life. He received an M.A. in English from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2023, where he won The Mimi Zanger Memorial Award in Fiction and William Carlin Slattery Memorial Award in Poetry or Drama.

 

He organized The Eddie Roth Reader in the summer of 2024 to share his writing with friends and interested acquaintances. He mainly sees the Reader as a platform for short fiction, which he will roll out over time. But he will present other forms, including a few of his old newspaper clips as examples of daily writing (and an old speech that meant a lot to him) for auld lang syne, as well as occasional poetry, essays, and fragments that comment on conditions and set some things down for the record.

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Eddie has made his living practicing law, first in New York, where he graduated from New York University (1979) and Fordham Law School (1982), then returning home to St. Louis, where he grew up.

 

​​Eddie also served on the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners (1998-2001) and spent nearly ten years (2002-2011)working as a newspaper editorial writer at the Dayton Daily News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  He spent another six years (2011-2017) in St. Louis municipal government in the administration of Francis G. Slay, the city's longest serving mayor. Most recently, Eddie has been a police legal advisor in the city's law department under Mayor Tishaura O. Jones.

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Eddie and Jeanne Philips-Roth, a legal aid lawyer and his wife of more than 35 years, live in a brick and stucco bungalow house in south St. Louis. They are especially proud of their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice.

Contact: eddierothnow@gmail.com

Featured Writing
Apartment at Lenox Square (2024)​

 

Uncle Jerry died six weeks ago at his place down in Florida. His housekeeper found him in bed, in his pajamas, propped up with pillows. His eyes were closed, and a magazine lay open face down on his chest. He looked as though he were asleep, she said.  He was 92 years old.

 

We called him “Uncle Jerry,” but his real name was Jerold. Jerold Lipstein. He wasn’t our uncle but was our great uncle, our grandmother Nana Rubin’s older brother. I was named for their younger brother, Julius, who died in childhood. I go by “Jules.”

 

None of us grandnieces and grandnephews saw much of Uncle Jerry growing up. I am not sure we saw him at all after Aunt Bridget, his wife, died nearly 15 years ago. Uncle Jerry and Aunt Bridget lived in Port De Lys – the “old smokestack city” – in a luxury apartment building on Lenox Square, just west of downtown. Then they retired to Florida. They had no children of their own, but they doted on Nana and Grandpa Rubin’s four children, especially my mother, Esther, who was the oldest.

 

CONT.

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