Rachael Phillips, once a church choir director, owes her unplanned writing career
to an omnipotent church secretary who laid down the law: each staff member had to
contribute a monthly article to the newsletter. Others considered this dictate a
punishment from God. But Rachael enjoying writing, and soon she was contributing
columns to a local newspaper.
Rachael won the 2004 Erma Bombeck Global Humor Award. The same year the Evangelical
Press Association awarded her third place in humor for "It's the Little Things that
Count" (Marriage Partnership, 2003). She has contributed humor articles to Kyria, Today's
Christian Woman, Marriage Partnership, ACFW's Afictionado, and others. She writes a
weekly humor column for the Plymouth, Indiana Pilot News, Marion, Indiana Chronicle-Tribune,
and Marion, Illinois Review called "Coffee Corner," the theme of her Web site. Rachael has
accumulated more than 400 hundred column and news bylines and has contributed to numerous
story and devotional collections.
Ride with Me into Christmas (2010), Rachael's novella in A Door County Christmas collection,
her first published fiction, was nominated for an American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW)
Carol Award. Her most recent published works, In Tune with You, in the Barbour collection
Cedar Creek Seasons, and Heartsong novels The Greatest Show on Earth and The Return of
Miss Blueberry, all have released since June 2012. She will publish another romance,
Kissing Bridges, in spring, 2013. Rachael's cozy mystery, Recipe for Deception, was
released by Annie's Publishing this year. Guilty Treasures will follow later in 2013.
A third, A Midsummer Night's Seam, will be published in 2014.
At Bethel College, Mishawaka, Indiana, Rachael graduated summa cum laude and made
connections that resulted in her writing four biographies. She also taught at the
college as an adjunct professor from 2005-2009. Her interest in research and biblical
studies culminated in her co-authoring a reference guide, Women of the Bible in 2011.
Rachael is active in the music ministry and women's ministries of her church, Upland
Community Church. She and her husband Steve, a small-town physician and adjunct professor
at Taylor University (Upland, Indiana), have been married thirty-eight years. They have
three grown children and five perfect grandchildren. Rachael and Steve enjoy watching
sports, talking theology, and riding their tandem bicycle throughout the picturesque Indiana countryside.