About Me
Hello, and welcome to my website! My name’s Rachelle Ferguson, and I’m a playwright and podcaster based in southern Illinois. I believe in the power of stories to show us who we are and who we could be, and my hope and passion for the plays I write is that they would “hold the mirror up to nature,” to quote Hamlet. My scripts are designed for use in churches, schools, co-ops, camps, and families. I hold a bachelor of arts in English and classical studies from Hillsdale College.
That’s the short version. If you’re a hardy soul and want the long version, keep reading!
My Story
To her own surprise, my amazing mother homeschooled me till I was seventeen. I grew up on a variety of curricula blending traditional and classical methods, and in the evenings my dad read aloud from the Chronicles of Narnia or the Sugar Greek Gang (his Poetry voice was the best thing ever). In both my studies and my free time, I always found myself fascinated by stories. In high school, I studied writing through One Year Adventure Novel, the Institute for Excellence in Writing, and HSLDA Online Academy. Meanwhile I spent my spare hours reading Shakespeare and G. K. Chesterton and writing stories about elves, knights, and teenage detectives.
In 2013, I left home for the wilderland of snowy Michigan to attend Hillsdale College, majoring in English and classical languages. During my time there I tutored in the college’s Writing Center, wrote for External Affairs, and worked as an undergraduate research assistant to Dr. Patricia Bart in her work on the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive. I also served on the editorial board of the college’s student literary publication, The Tower Light, and from the English department I received several awards for my poetry, prose, and academic writing.
By 2015, I had also written half a dozen plays. That summer, as a college junior, I founded my script-publishing company, Kittywham Productions, and launched this website. (For a bit of background on how I started writing play scripts, check out my post How It Began.) Since graduating from Hillsdale in 2017, I’ve become a teacher, playwright, barista, and podcaster. Throughout the three seasons of my podcast, Unknown Friends, I discussed classic and contemporary books in weekly episodes, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts or any of your favorite podcast platforms.