BIO

Rebecca Anderson is a pastor at two churches in Chicago, one of which she started from scratch with a friend. Her biscuits are unparalleled, and she knows the best places to pick juneberries. You can find her on Sunday mornings at Bethany, a progressive-traditional church in Ravenswood (BethanyChicago.com), and Sunday evenings at Gilead, a queer storytelling bar church (GileadChicago.org). Outside of her work at the churches, she is the head honcho of Earshot (EarshotStories.com), running storytelling workshops across the country. She has a Masters in Divinity from the University of Chicago and graduated from Hampshire College (Amherst, MA) with a degree in Playwrighting. She hosts potlucks, plants gardens, and almost certainly wants to have coffee with you.

INSPIRED BY

The Paper Machete (live show); Invisibilia, Without Fail, Reply All, Love and Radio, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (podcasts); poet Ross Gay; author Eula Biss; stand-up comedy, TUTA, great fiction

EXPLORING

I started out the year thinking I was supposed to write a book; I even had some ideas about it. Instead, or maybe as part of that, I'm working on material to share/workshop live as part of Fresh Meat, an opportunity for Chicago storytellers to workshop as much as 80 minutes of new material. As I've tried (and tried) to write a book, I've learned (and re-learned) that I write for performance, make discoveries in performance, and edit post-performance; so I committed to a May 10 Fresh Meat slot to find out what's possible. The thing I'm wrestling with, and feel both stuck in and motivated by, is the question "what's it about?" As a storytelling teacher/facilitator, it's the question I most enjoy asking and working on with a storyteller. When I ask it of myself, I draw a blank. I hope to use the live event to do for me some of the work I often do for others.