After years as one of the most celebrated self-published authors in the North Shore area, Pauli Rose Libsohn has achieved international recognition for her prolific works.
A Manhasset resident who has worked at Rallye Motors in Roslyn for 39 years, Libsohn has authored, adapted, or edited 10 books since 2014, with several featuring the writing of her late mother Mitzi Libsohn.
“I was always looking for ways to get my mother’s work out into the world,” Libsohn said in a phone interview.
If it weren’t for the extra time she had during the COVID-19 pandemic, Libsohn says, she most likely wouldn’t have found and entered four international book contests in March.
“It wasn’t for the pandemic, I don’t think I would have thought about these contests and researched it like I did since I had time to do it,” Libsohn said. “I was so nervous about entering. I said, should I, shouldn’t I? I didn’t know what I was up against. All these other authors, they have a lot of good qualities also, and I was going to be up against all these people?”
After the majority of the year passed by, including a win for Best Author at Blank Slate Media’s Best of the North Shore contest, Libsohn received exciting news last week: four of the titles she submitted had been honored in their respective categories at Story Monsters Ink Magazine’s Royal Dragonfly Book Award contest.
Libsohn’s “What is Love,” a biography following her parents’ romance was named an honorable mention in the Biography/Autobiography/Memoir category; her work “Messages of Love Remembered,” made of her parents letters, took second place in the Letters, Journals and Diaries category; Mitzi’s “Immortal Kisses: Confessions of a Poet,” took second place in the Poetry category, and “Silhouettes – Literary Passageways,” reflections on literature written by mother and daughter, took first place in the Other Nonfiction.
“When I came home from work and saw that on my computer, I just about fell over!” Libsohn said.
The next printings of those four books, she says, will feature a badge recognizing the awards won. Also in the new year, Libsohn will be self-publishing 10 children’s books based on her mother’s writings. She adds that Mitzi most likely would have been thrilled at the news of the wins.
“If she were here, she’d be screaming,” Libsohn said. “She’d be screaming and she’d be hugging me and kissing me, she’d be so excited. This one contest recognized the beauty and the brilliance of my mother’s writing, and they recognized the beautiful romance between her and my father that I wrote about in ‘What is Love.’”
All of Libsohn’s books are available for purchase at Amazon.com.
