Alfred Rosa is Professor of English at the University of Vermont where he teaches courses in writing, language, American literature, Children's Literature, Italian American Literature, and editing and publishing. He received his B.A. (1964) from the University of Connecticut and his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Massachusetts .

Author of numerous articles and books, Professor Rosa has published best-selling textbooks in the fields of writing and language study, among them Language Awareness, ed. Paul Eschholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark; Language: Readings in Language and Culture, ed. Paul Eschholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark; Subjects/Strategies: A Writer's Reader, ed. Paul Eschholz and Alfred Rosa; Models for Writers, ed. Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz; and Outlooks and Insights, ed. Paul Eschholz and Alfred Rosa, Themes for Writers, ed. Paul Eschholz and Alfred Rosa, all with Bedford/St. Martin's, and Controversies: Contemporary Arguments for College Writers , ed. Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz,  The Writer's Brief Handbook , and most recently, The Writer's Pocket Handbook, Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz with Longman Publishers.

Professor Rosa has also edited The Old Century and the New: Essays in Honor of Charles Angoff and written Salem, Transcendentalism, and Hawthorne. In 1967, He founded Massachusetts Studies in English, a graduate student journal still being published by the University of Massachusetts.

In 1973-74 Professor Rosa was a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Sassari , Sardinia, Italy, where he renewed his connections with his Italian roots and came to know the Italian people and their culture firsthand. In 1988, he reprinted Mari Tomasi's Like Lesser Gods, reintroducing the novel to a whole new generation of readers and helping to spark a renewed interest in Italian-American literature.

Professor Rosa is the President of the New England Press, Inc. , a regional publishing company he founded in 1978. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the The Vermont Commons School .