Dr. Laurie Rozakis is a writer of the "Complete Idiots" books and an expert on writing, grammar, usage, and test preparation. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Hofstra University in 1973; her Master of Arts from Hofstra in 1975; and her PhD from the State University of New York in 1984.
Career Highlights more less
Rozakis got her start as a writer in 1981, when she published a review book on the Advanced Placement exam in English Literature with ARCO. To date, she has published more than 100 books and articles.
In addition to writing, Rozakis has been teaching for 38 years.
Rozakis's first work was a series of books for ARCO, many in test preparation (The New GED, College English Placement and Proficiency Exam, Reading Power: Getting Started, and Power Reading.) She continued writing widely on test preparation, most recently publishing three test prep books for elementary and middle-school students through Scholastic.
The Complete Idiots Guides
Between 1995 and 2003, Rozakis wrote more than a dozen books in the Complete Idiots Guide series, including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creative Writing, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Research Methods and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style. She has revised many of the books for subsequent editions.
Scholarship
Rozakis's early scholarship focused on writing, including articles on evaluating writing for SUNY Councils on Writing, The Missouri English Bulletin, Exercise Exchange, and Kansas English. Subsequently, she turned to early American literature, publishing “A New Source for Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne” in American Transcendental Quarterly: A Journal of New England Writers (1986). This was followed by “Puritan Punishment for Adulterous Conduct” in The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review (1990). In 2004, she wrote essays on Louis Simpson and Alicia Ostriker for the Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. Her most recent scholarship was analysis of classic American novels for the PBS televisions series The American Novel (2007).
Video Instruction
Recently, Rozakis has combined her expertise with writing and speaking in a series of instructional videos. These include a 10 CD/video series: Upgrade Your Writing Skills (2006—07) and a 4 CD/Video series: SAT Subject Test, English (2008) for Video Aided Instruction.
Speaking career
Dr. Rozakis has a flourishing career as a public speaker, giving frequent lectures, seminars, and interviews. Her television work includes serving as the “Vocabulary Judge” in the Word of the Day final contest on Live! With Regis and Kelly, being an grammar expert on Fox Good Day, New York, and being part of a panel on the CBS The Morning Show and another on the Maury Povich Show.
She has been interviewed for Newsday, The Los Angeles Times, The Sacramento Bee, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio's Morning Edition, New York Daily News, The Newark Star-Ledger, Seventeen magazine, The New York Post, and The Dallas Morning News on grammar and test preparation.
Rozakis is married to comic book writer and editor Bob Rozakis, with whom she has collaborated on a few comic book stories, as well as The Complete Idiot's Guide to Office Politics (Alpha Books, 1998) (ISBN 0028623975). They have two children: son Charles "Chuck", and daughter Samantha "Sammi".
Honors and Awards more less
Dr. Rozakis has received a number of noteworthy awards, most recently being named the Town of Oyster Bay “Woman of Distinction” in the Arts (2008). She won The State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994 and number of fellowships, including several Joint Labor/Management Committee Individual Development Awards, a Porter Fellowship, a Farmingdale College Foundation Faculty Merit Award, and an Empire State Challenger Fellowship. Her career and life are profiled in the reference books Contemporary Authors and Something About the Author.
