"An agnostic ex-pastor on the hunt for God
in a small RV with two big dogs.
What could go wrong?"

About Rebecca

If you take a ten-year-old kid, put her on an 80-acre farm in the rolling hills of northeastern Ohio, and let her run wild, the odds of ending up with a nature loving spiritually hungry writer are pretty good.

Rebecca writes about the things she loves — wonder and mystery, travel and discovery, spirituality and growth — in memoir, essays, and flash nonfiction. Besides her completed memoir, “Chasing Light: One Van, Two Dogs, and an Ex-Pastor’s Search for the Divine,” she has started a new memoir about her mother, Rachel Carson, and the sea and is completing work on an essay collection, “Naturally Occurring Junctures.”

Rebecca earned a BA from Wittenberg University, an M.Div. from Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. She’s taught at Appalachian State University and in the UNCW OLLI program, spent seven years working for a domestic violence and rape crisis agency, and in another life served three Lutheran congregations. 

She’s also obsessed with the mystery genre, so much so that’s she’s serializing one over on Substack, chapter by chapter. Join the journey at Mystery, Memoir, and Meaning. She currently divides her time between North Carolina’s beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and the Carolina Coast. 

 

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"Mystery, Memoir, & Meaning," and join the journey. 

Her Writing

Rebecca’s work has appeared in Oprah Daily, The BOSTON GLOBE, BuzzFeed, TIME,  Five Minutes,  The Razor, the New York Times Tiny Love Stories, HuffPost, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Daily Beast, Pithead Chapel, the Christian Science Monitor, Crack the Spine, The Gettysburg Review, The Rumpus, the New South Journal, the Waccamaw Journal, and on the Brevity blog. 

Her essay, "Pilgrimage," was named a finalist in The Masters Review Anthology Contest, Vol. VII, and appears in the anthology released Fall, 2018. 

Rebecca's essay, “Cooper’s Heart,” published in O, The Oprah Magazine, was name Best Essay of 2017 at the Hearst Magazines Editorial Excellence Awards and was selected for inclusion in O's Little Guide to the Big Questions (Flatiron Books, 2018). The essay was also reprinted in Oprah Daily in July, 2022. 

She is a two-time Pushcart nominee and has been awarded three North Carolina Regional Artist Project Grants (2013, 2015, and 2018). She has also attended residencies at  Dairy Hollow, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Ragdale, and was selected to receive a 2017-2018 North Carolina Artist Fellowship.

Her essay, "The Departure," which appeared in the Summer, 2012 issue of The Gettysburg Review, has been reprinted by Redux Literary Journal.

Subscribe to my Substack newsletter,
"Mystery, Memoir, & Meaning," and join the journey.