Bio
Hi there! I hail from North Atlanta, Georgia, where there was never enough culture to satisfy me; studied in Athens, Georgia, where I began to become myself; left (as the country ballads croon) my heart in Asheville, North Carolina, where I felt at home more than anywhere else before or since; and currently reside, write, garden, teach (high school English), parent (two shimmering young children), snuggle (the children and two strange cats), stim (Tai Ji for the adult neurodivergent win!) and read (like I’m running out of time) in the hill-steeped, history-dense, furiously-fraught city of Lynchburg, Virginia.
Publications
My essays, articles, and book reviews appear in the publications listed below, as well as in print in Relief Journal and Kinfolk Magazine.
I am currently in the final editing process on my first memoir/CNF book (out late ’22/early ’23 with T.S. Poetry Press) about houses, their rooms, and the lives we do or don't live inside them. I am always at work on my first-first book, a YA novel with Wales and wheelchairs, mothers and daughters, mysterious libraries and magical books, and - Is there anything more important in the world? - friends.
Most of my online essays are listed below, but several pieces about disability in my family ran anonymously, to protect precious identities. If you'd like to read those, email me (link in profile), and I'll be happy to direct you.
Key of David, The Rabbit Room 12.17.21; originally published at Art House America 11.30.16
Teacher Stories: the Form for Me, Tweetspeak Poetry 6.17.21
Mockingbird, Foundling House 5.18.21
The Writer Makes Coffee, Brevity blog 1.25.21
A Line of Words, Tweetspeak Poetry 12.16.20
Bilbo's Garden, The Rabbit Room 5.28.2020 and Christ and Pop Culture 7.1.14
Pandemic Journal, Tweetspeak Poetry 5.21.2020
Significant Lights, The Rabbit Room 1.2020
Weathering the Books, The Rabbit Room 9.16.19; originally published at the Curator, Summer 2011
Prepare Yourself, The Curator 8.21.19; originally published in longer form in Relief, Spring 2016
Here, Now, The Curator 7.31.19
Older, Coffee + Crumbs 3.20.17
Supplication, Proximity 2016
Racism 101, The Curator 11.14.16
Crafting Kindness, Art House America 7.2016
This Side of the Standing Stone
Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society, Issue 56, December 2015
All That We Can't Leave Behind
reprinted at Makes You Mom 3.11.16; originally published at The Curator Fall 2011
Here I Stay Makes You Mom 1.6.15
Making It Count Makes You Mom 8.24.15
A Halfway Review of a Sometime Farmer The Curator 8.19.15
Open Communications, Makes You Mom 5.27.15
Safe as Houses, The Curator 2.4.15
Certain Tides, The Curator 8.11.14 and The Equals Record in print Fall 2013
Watching for Trains, The Curator 2.17.14
An Astonishing Work, Art House America December 2013
Permission to Not Talk, The Curator 10.11.13
Interruptions, The Equals Record Fall 2013
Nothing but a Hedgehog, The Curator Summer 2013
Ready to Go, The Equals Record Spring 2013
Owe It to Us, The Curator Spring 2013
Chimneys Dark and Spirits Bright, The Curator Winter 2012
Shire Reckonings, The Curator Fall 2012
Starting Over, The Equals Record Fall 2012
The Lighted Shore, The Equals Record Summer 2012
Other Wizards, Many Worlds, The Curator Summer 2012
Eternity in an Afternoon, Kinfolk Magazine Vol. IV Summer 2012
The Bearable Lightness of Letting Go, The Curator Summer 2012
The Is-ness of Art, The Curator Winter 2012
All that We Can't Leave Behind, The Curator Fall 2011
A Neighborly Kind of Quiet, The Curator Fall 2011
Weathering the Books, The Curator Summer 2011
Mountain Roads, Sing Me Home, The Curator Summer 2011
BOOK REVIEWS
Death, Horror, and the Absurd: review of Fiddleblack, The Review Review Fall 2014
A Lit Mag Epic in Scope: review of Pleiades, The Review Review Fall 2012
The Devil in the Details: review of Dogwood Journal, The Review Review Summer 2012
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh The Equals Record Fall 2012
Open Your Eyes Wide: The Generous Vision of Marilynne Robinson The Other Journal Spring 2012
ACADEMIC WORK
Of Fact, Faith, and Fairy Tale: The Mythopoeia that Shaped C. S. Lewis’s Life
Pending publication in Through the Wardrobe: A Narnia Edited Collection, ed. Craig Svonkin and John Briggs.
Unrolling the Book Again: C.S. Lewis on the Successes and Shortcomings of Languageas Rebecca RitterThe Lamppost of the Southern California C.S. Lewis Society: A Literary Review of Lewis Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3: Fall 2006Fairy-Tale Protagonists in Other Worlds: The Under-Hero of George MacDonald's Fairy Landas Rebecca Ritter Through the Wardrobe: A Narnia Conference, University of California, Riverside (Presentation): 2006.Unrolling the Book Again: C.S. Lewis on the Efficacy of Language in Perelandra and Till We Have Facesas Rebecca RitterFor completion of Master of Arts in English, the University of Georgia: 2003.