Rachael
Phillips began her unplanned writing career contributing columns to her
church newsletter. Positive responses from her congregation motivated
her to attend a writing seminar at Bethel College, Mishawaka, Indiana,
where instructors encouraged writers to submit their work to
publishers. Rachael sent a humor column to the Hometown editor of the
South Bend Tribune, who requested more. He also asked her to cover
local news events. For five years, Rachael wrote for the Tribune,
accumulating more than a hundred bylines.
Rachael also began classes at Bethel College in January 1998 and earned
an associate degree in professional writing in December 2001. She will
receive her bachelor of arts in English at Bethel in May 2005.
Rachael keeps busy writing in the second-story many-windowed office she
has dubbed the "Tree House," a fulfillment of her childhood fantasy.
She has published humorous magazine articles in Virtue,
Today’s
Christian Woman and Marriage Partnership.
“It’s the
Little Things that Count” (Marriage Partnership, Fall 2003)
took
third place in the Evangelical Press Association’s
competition
this year. She also won the 2004 Erma Bombeck Global Humor Award with
her essay “Dam It All, Anyway” in a contest
sponsored by
the Washington-Centerville Library in conjunction with the University
of Dayton, where Erma attended.
Rachael has authored four biographies in Barbour Publishing’s
Heroes of the Faith series: Frederick Douglass:
Abolitionist and Reformer; Billy Sunday: Evangelist on the
Sawdust Trail; St. Augustine: Early Church Father; and Well
with
My Soul, a collection of four mini-biographies of hymn writers.
An inspirational speaker and humorist, Rachael enjoys sharing with
small and large groups of diverse backgrounds and interests. She
teaches women’s Bible studies and a college-aged Sunday
school
class, as well as leading worship and performing solos.
Married to Steve, a family physician, and the mother of Beth, 25,
Christy, 22, and David, 19, she especially enjoys her new
granddaughter, Annabelle Kate. Her hobbies include hand-holding walks
with her husband, riding their tandem bicycle, reading and singing.