Rachael Shay Button is a writer, a teacher, a reader, an explorer, an athlete, a place-based educator, and most recently a children’s and young adult librarian.  She’s from Metro-Detroit but currently lives with her husband Peter Kraus and their two cats (Pippin and Totoro) in Decorah, Iowa.

Rachael holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University.  In the years since graduate school, Rachael has lived in an intentional community on the border of a wilderness area in Washington’s North Cascades, worked on an organic farm in Maine, road-tripped across Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, taught field science in Olympic National Park, hiked 180 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, and led students on backpacking trips in North Cascade National Park and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  She’s been a writer, a teacher, an adjunct professor, a Dean of Students, an artist-in-residence, a naturalist, a farm hand, a wilderness trip leader, a marketing coordinator, and a high school cross country coach (among other things.)  Her current work as a children’s and young adult librarian unites her love of books and writing with her passion for hospitality, cultivating community, building a sense of place, and working with youth of all ages.

Rachael’s essays and poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pank, The Collagist, Creative Nonfiction, Diagram, and Redivider, among other journals.  Her essay “Crossings” was nominated for a Pushcart prize.