Judi A. Rypma

Judith Rypma's newest novels include OUT OF THE SHADOWS WITH CATHERINE THE GREAT (a companion/sequel to her earlier historical fantasy "In the Shadows" released in 2024), plus BABA AND THE STEPMOTHER: A RETELLING OF SNOW WHITE. This one reimagines the fairy tale from a totally alternative--and somewhat naughty--point of view. What if Snow White is not so pure? What if the stepmother is not really evil? Are all witches wicked? Set in the late 17th century.

Previous novels: "In the Shadows With Catherine the Great" (historical time travel); "Mrs. Fleeney's Flowers" (middle grade about a would-be witch and mental illness), and "The Amber Beads" (historical time travel). Rypma's fiction and poetry have appeared in over 150 literary journals, as well as in 7 chapbooks and 3 full-length poetry collections. One of the latter, "Looking for the Amber Room," traces the history and mystery of the eighth wonder of the world.

When not teaching college literature or writing, she is a long-time travel-holic, defender of animal rights, and recovering gardening addict.

IN THE SHADOWS WITH CATHERINE THE GREAT (adult novel historical fantasy/time travel 460 pg.) Paperback or Kindle.

When a young Prussian princess is summoned to the Russian empress's court as a potential bride, she has no idea her life will yield heartache, danger, intrigue, and endless power struggles. Meanwhile, when a 21st-century American teen visits St. Petersburg, a statue at the Hermitage inexplicably catapults her back to the 18th century. Lost and bewildered, she emerges as a maid of honor to the future Catherine the Great.

As Catherine struggles with an unbearable marriage and fights despair, her new lady Maria falls in love while struggling to keep her modern identity a secret. Neither feels safe in the glittering, treacherous, and lust-filled world of imperial Russia. In chapters that alternate their points of view, "In the Shadows" is a meticulously researched tale of romance, friendship, pageantry, spies, and deceit that explores the early years of the world's greatest stateswoman in rich detail.

OUT OF THE SHADOWS WITH CATHERINE THE GREAT

This sequel/stand-alone picks up where the earlier novel leaves off, with Catherine II galloping into Petersburg to seize the throne and assume all the challenges of ruling the world's largest empire. Meanwhile, her lady in waiting, Maria, faces the biggest challenge of her life as she must decide whether or not to leave the man she loves in order to find her way back to a future she can barely imagine.

WORSHIPPING AT LENIN'S MAUSOLEUM

Poet and English Associate Professor Judith Rypma's collection of poems, WORSHIPPING AT LENIN'S MAUSOLEUM (released by FutureCycle Press to coincide with the centenary of the Soviet Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs in 1917) traces the speaker's introduction to the Soviet Union from the Cold War through the first decades of the 21st century.

In the opening poem, the speaker races in terror during an elementary school air raid drill to escape the “dreaded Commies.” Two decades later, the speaker finds herself battling the restrictions of “Soviet-Style Touring.” In poems that provide a lyrical witness to a Russia in flux, from glasnost to the embattled 1990s to 21st century pride, Rypma offers not only touching and often humorous observations, but portrays a deep love for a country Churchill once called “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Whether exploring Stalin’s bunker, the logistics of Lenin’s preserved corpse, or the witch Baba Yaga, the poems provide delightful and keen glimpses into a place often seen as the Big Bad Wolf on the world stage. Like nested dolls, the nation and these poems slowly reveal themselves the way “colored glass and beads / rearrange themselves / with each twist / of the kaleidoscope’s wheel.” Worshipping at Lenin’s Mausoleum invites you to open each and every one.

Poet Katie Manning, whose most recent collection is "Tasty Other," points out that “these poems not only engage with Lenin, Stalin, and Catherine the Great, but also Raggedy Ann, Dorothy Gale, and Baba Yaga. This short collection is at once historical and immediate, political and spiritual, familiar and surprising.”

Rypma, who has traveled to Russia and the former Soviet Union 30 times, has published over 150 poems in literary journals, as well as six chapbooks and three full-length poetry collections. She not only lectured at Russian universities, but led college students on a Study Abroad tour to St. Petersburg.

ROCKS IN MY HEAD: Poetry for Young People About Rocks, Minerals, and Crystals

The list of poets forging links with precious stones and metals begins with Ovid and continues in an endless strand of gems by the likes of Poe, Donne, Yeats, and Tennyson. Now poet and Children’s Literature Professor Judith Rypma has continued this tradition, mining the metaphoric possibilities of rocks and minerals in "Rocks In My Head: Poems for Young People About Rocks, Minerals, and Crystals" (Rockhound Press).

The collection contains a variety of types of poems, from haiku and visual poetry, to lyric and rhyming. Rypma’s own color photography of the subject rocks graces the pages.

“As a poet and amateur rock hound, I’ve been making connections between gemstones and poetry for decades,” Rypma notes. “And as someone who works with future educators, I’ve simultaneously been a long-time advocate of forging a relationship between science and the language arts. This book is the culmination of all those interests and beliefs.”

According to Rypma, getting young people to connect with poetry initially can be challenging: “Even my college students, most of whom plan to teach literature in grade school or middle school, tend to resist the idea of poetry when we get to that unit.”

But Rypma, who does presentations on poetry and geology at area grade and middle schools, has discovered that children react enthusiastically when other interests intersect with poetry. “I feel like a rock star—pardon the pun—when I’m in front of those kids. They ooh and aah over the visuals of rocks, and at the same time respond with excitement to the poems I share—not just mine, but those of other poets who have written about geology.”

Rypma is also the author of three adult poetry collections focusing on mineralogy: "Holy Rocks" and "Mineral Treasures" (both chapbooks from Finishing Line Press) and a full-length book, "Amber Love" (from FutureCycle Press). She has published a number of other chapbooks, as well as over 150 poems in literary journals.

THE AMBER NOTES (FutureCycle Press)

In one of her latest books for adults, Judith Rypma once again weaves words into poetic patterns that explore everything from the forbidden fruits to the healing gems of our lives. AMBER NOTES “transports us across a lifetime and around the globe,” as Atlantic Review editor Dan Veach puts it. Richard Katrovas, author of 14 books, concurs, adding that “an insect in amber is the perfect emblem for this dance.”

Yet after the joys and fears of childhood, the sexuality and wanderlust of adulthood, and the disappointments of old age, the speaker seems to finally have found that peace that we all covet:

Do not remember me

as someone with years

stolen away

but a woman freed

from stares who sees more

wrapped in anonymity

and has finally acquired

all the hues of her life.

NOVEL: THE AMBER BEADS (Black Opal Books)

When a teenager inherits the contents of her great grandmother’s Michigan farmhouse, she has no idea what awaits her—except for piles and piles of hoarded junk. However, after fiddling with an amber necklace she discovers in a locked room, she finds herself suddenly whisked back in time to the court of the last ruling Romanovs and a Russia in the midst of World War I. As the events of 1917 kindle a flame that becomes the roar of revolution, they not only touch her life and that of her new family, but force her to cope with new ways of seeing the world, her cultural heritage, and even the complications of a unique and complex love. And how—or will—she make it back to the present?