Rebecca Gummere
Nonfiction
Sugar Grove, NC
Rebecca Gummere is a writer, traveler, foodie, and “professional wonderer” whose work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, The Masters Review Anthology, Vol. VII, and other venues. Her essay, “Cooper’s Heart,” (O, The Oprah Magazine, April, 2017) was named Best Essay of 2017 at the Hearst Editorial Excellence Awards. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her work has been recognized in the New South Journal Writing Contest and The Masters Review Anthology Prize Vol. VII.
Rebecca holds a BA from Wittenberg University, an MDiv from Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She was awarded a 2017-2018 North Carolina Artist Fellowship and has attended residencies at Dairy Hollow and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
After serving fourteen years as an ordained pastor, Rebecca worked for a domestic violence and rape crisis center, and taught in the Rhetoric & Composition program at Appalachian State University. Before moving from the mountains of North Carolina to the High Desert of New Mexico, she was on staff at a regional food hub, working to increase community investment in the work of local farmers and producers who use sustainable practices. She is a co-founder of PUB-lish, a group of writers seeking to promote literature and writing in their rural community in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
In 2016 Rebecca’s already wavering faith collapsed altogether. Over the next months she gave away most of her belongings, rented her house to friends, bought a small used RV, and took off on a nine-month solo cross-country spiritual pilgrimage with her two dogs. The journey is the subject of her recently completed memoir, Chasing Light. She is currently working on a food memoir-in-essays, Recipes for the End of the World and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Featured Work
Chasing Light
Prologue
Memoir by Rebecca Gummere
One July morning, as the sun slants prettily and the birds sing in praise of it, while the deer rustle and forage among the wild roses in the field next door to my small bungalow in the North Carolina mountains, a small soft breeze comes to me carrying a message. There is no whispered voice that brings me the news. It is not a message with words.
Rather, it swirls at the nape of my neck, lands on my skin and moves the pale hairs on my arms. It stirs my spirit the way wind ripples the surface of water.
It is an announcement affirming what I already know, what I’ve known for a while: it is time for me to get up and be on my way.