Rose O’Keefe is very pleased with her latest book, Historic Genesee Country (History Press, 2010).

"After writing two picture-history books, learning as I was going, this one came together more easily."

Rose stumbled into local history when she and her husband bought an 1865 cottage in the South Wedge in 1976. They now live near it, in a 1913 American Four-Square.

She first got hooked on South Wedge history as a volunteer writer for The Wedge, association newspaper for South Wedge Planning Committee, and was writer and editor of The Wedge for 13 years.

She is a member of Whistle Stop Writers writing group, Rochester Association of Children's Writers & Illustrators, Friends of Ganondagan and Friends of the Public Library. Rose has also achieved the Competent  Communicator level through Toast Masters International's Life Learners Club 4323.

In March 2005, Rose began her first Arcadia book on the urban village called the South Wedge and also started organizing a Regional History Fair. Fortunately her first boxes of Rochester’s South Wedge arrived an hour before the start of the Fair! Organizing Rochester's South Wedge was such a satisfying challenge, she was inspired to pull together another vintage photo collection for the area in southeast Rochester from the Genesee River to Cobbs’s Hill.
After having the fair at several locations, this year the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse Historical Society and the new Charlotee Village & Transportation Museum are hosting the 2010 Regional History Fair in Charlotte.

"We have such a great group of speakers and vendors, that the History Fair is my idea of Christmas. I look forward to it all year and I'm always thinking about how to make the next one even better."