My Secret Mentor

I went online to peek at Style Weekly a day early and saw that Rozanne Epps had died on Sunday. Rozanne was Style's "Rosie Right," the copy editor, and for a very long time, editor of the Back Page. She was The Decider during the 1990s who decided who got to be on the Back Page, and very, very often, especially in the early 1990s, she chose me.

I was very grateful because I couldn't get anywhere at the Times-Dispatch as a writer. Every time I applied, it seemed the editors found a new way to humiliate me, variously insulting me for having a child, being a woman, having gone to VCU, having majored in journalism...all things I couldn't do anything about. And they were not kind about it. I wasn't asking for a lot, but even collecting recipes and recording wedding submissions were jobs I could not get.

When Style began, its first editor, Laura Cameron, was encouraging. She bought my articles and said nice things. Then she left and the next editor, an elitist male, didn't like me at all, so I was out for many years. Then Rozanne came in and seemed to love everything I submitted, even things I now realize were half-baked. When I didn't have any ideas, she would prod me with an email to come up with something, and always requested "first rights," as if dozens of publishers were clamoring for my essays. Actually, for awhile I had a little racket going as Style's sister publications under the Landmark umbrella would buy the essays, too, as well as a weekly in Charlottesville. A quadruple score, Richmond, Norfolk, Charlottesville and Jacksonville, Fla., would net me a decent check. (Style alone paid $60.)

When I was at an all-time low in the early 1990s, unemployed and working part-time in a hotel gift shop, Style would run house ads proclaiming "the voices of Richmond" were found in its pages. There were only two women on that list. One was the richest woman in town who was active in the non-profit community, and the other was me. It was a strange situation to be in.

Musicians and writers tend to be at their most creative when they are miserable, broke, poor and desperate. As the 1990s progressed, my life improved and I wrote less. Than Rozanne was no longer the Back Page editor and nothing I wrote after that made it to the Back Page, which became serious and political and meaningful. So I have to say, thanks Rozanne for the ride. It was fun. I still run into people who remember some of my pieces, and that $60 was sometimes all the money I made that week.

Strangely enough, we never met or even talked on the phone. Our whole relationship was by email. One time I was in the office for some reason and she walked by me, and of course, didn't know it was me. And I didn't identify myself because...well, I have problems being even that marginally outgoing. But I knew it was her, the closest thing I ever had to a mentor. And I was grateful. Thank you for believing in me, Mrs. Epps. It is the most precious gift of all.