Rachel van Aalst earned her bachelor’s in Creative Writing and Spanish at Appalachian State University. She was there awarded the 2017 John Foster West Creative Writing Scholarship in a contest judged by Richard Blanco, the United States’ fifth inaugural poet. Rachel’s poetry has appeared in her university’s literary magazine The Peel Literature and Arts Review and in Z Publishing House’s books Dream of a World Waking Up and North Carolina’s Best Emerging Poets. She now lives in Northern Kentucky with her family and their two dogs and two horses.