Russ Rymer

Old Perplexity
Russ Rymer contracts with authors and journalists to edit their non-fiction books and magazine stories. Writers employ him to help them through the conceptual and structural stages of their projects, as well as to polish finished manuscripts. To contact him regarding a specific project, please write to him at russ@rymer.com.

Genie—A Scientific Tragedy
The true story of a young girl who spent her Los Angeles area childhood strapped to a chair and locked in a back room. Discovered in 1970, when she was thirteen, she became a celebrated test case for linguists studying controversial theories of child language aquisition, because she had reached the age of puberty without being spoken to. Rymer relates the saga of Genie's dramatic re-emergence into the normal world, and the tragedy that followed, when the scientists she had been living with dropped her back on her mother's doorstep, and she disappeared from sight.

American Beach—A Saga of Race, Wealth, and Memory
"First we had segregation. Then integration. Then disintegration." -- resident, American Beach

Through three connected lives in and around northeast Florida's black resort town of American Beach--an unarmed black motorist killed by a white policeman; the great-granddaughter of Florida's first black millionaire, who lives on the beach with next to nothing; and prominent Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston--Rymer presents a vision of a nation where the futures of both races are as linked as their histories, where the lost record of heroic black enterprise and prominence offers a key to the struggles of every modern American.

Out of Pernambuco
Russ Rymer's upcoming book details the third-world ecological crisis that threatens the performance of Western music, and chronicles the struggle of some of the modern world's last traditional craftsmen, the makers of bows for violins, violas, cellos, and basses, to confront it. Out of Pernambuco will be published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin and Berlin Verlag.