Rachel May
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  • Books & Stitching
    • An American Quilt
    • Quilting with a Modern Slant
    • The Benedictines
    • The Experiments: A Legend in Pictures & Words
    • Images from The Experiments
    • The Fabric Notebook
    • Quilts for Cover (functional)
  • News
  • Freelance/Essays
  • Freelance Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Events
Rachel May
  • Home
  • About
  • Books & Stitching
    • An American Quilt
    • Quilting with a Modern Slant
    • The Benedictines
    • The Experiments: A Legend in Pictures & Words
    • Images from The Experiments
    • The Fabric Notebook
    • Quilts for Cover (functional)
  • News
  • Freelance/Essays
  • Freelance Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Events
© RACHEL MAY
Website by OtherPeoplesPixels
  • The White Oak Tree at McLean: A Case of Recovery / Best American Science & Nature Writing 2024

    The White Oak Tree at McLean: A Case of Recovery / Best American Science & Nature Writing 2024

    Selected for Best American Science & Nature Writing 2024, ed. Bill McKibben, an essay about the trees at McLean Hospital, shinrin-yoku, an unknown landscape historian, and the campus' landscape history. Published in Arnoldia: The Nature of Trees, ed. Matthew Battles.

  • At a Dark Time in My Life, an Oak Tree Gave Me Hope

    At a Dark Time in My Life, an Oak Tree Gave Me Hope

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/11/09/magazine/a-mighty-oak-tree/|At a Dark Time in My Life, an Oak Tree Gave Me Hope, Boston Globe Magazine|

  • I used to live in a childcare desert. Then I came to Cambridge.

    I used to live in a childcare desert. Then I came to Cambridge.

    The city is offering free access to high-quality preschool. More places need to do the same.

  • Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Wagner Reed

    Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Wagner Reed

    |https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/obituaries/elizabeth-wagner-reed-overlooked.html|Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Wagner Reed, Who Resurrected Legacies of Women in Science
    Reed made several discoveries in genetics and dedicated her career toward supporting women scientists. Yet she herself fell into obscurity.|

  • Shooting Coyotes is a Short-Term Solution

    Shooting Coyotes is a Short-Term Solution

    Real Coexistence Starts with Changing Human Behavior
    Sierra Magazine

  • Climate Change is Threatening New England's Beloved Clams

    Climate Change is Threatening New England's Beloved Clams
  • Transforming the Decorative into Dissent

    Transforming the Decorative into Dissent


    Just before receiving residential treatment for OCD, Rachel May found that she couldn’t write, and used quilting and embroidery to express her feelings instead. Her chosen medium, she reveals, was like that of the quiet revolutionaries who, incarcerated and classified as ‘lunatics’, spoke their truth with embroidery needles.

  • Interview with Kim Todd: Who Created Creative Nonfiction

    Interview with Kim Todd: Who Created Creative Nonfiction
  • 'The Good of the Whole': Talking Weaving, Coding, and Indigenous Scholarship with Rhiannon Sorrell

    'The Good of the Whole': Talking Weaving, Coding, and Indigenous Scholarship with Rhiannon Sorrell
  • Mycelium, essay & photos in Guernica Magazine

    Mycelium, essay & photos in Guernica Magazine

    Guernica Magazine
    named a Notable Essay in Best American Science & Nature Writing, 2022, ed. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

  • Public Thinker: Chawne Kimber on Constructing Quilts & Speaking History

    Public Thinker: Chawne Kimber on Constructing Quilts & Speaking History
  • Here's why scientists are studying Maine's coastline

    Here's why scientists are studying Maine's coastline

    |National Geographic: Here's why scientists are studying Maine's coastline

  • Why the neat-freak OCD stereotype hurts people with the disorder

    Why the neat-freak OCD stereotype hurts people with the disorder

    Why the neat-freak OCD stereotype hurts people with the disorder

  • "Pets are helping us cope..." National Geographic

    "Pets are helping us cope..." National Geographic
  • Let's Talk About Bruno: In Encanto's OCD Allegory, the Weird Brother Deserves Better

    Let's Talk About Bruno: In Encanto's OCD Allegory, the Weird Brother Deserves Better
  • Navigating Solo with a Terrible Sense of Direction, Outside Online

    Navigating Solo with a Terrible Sense of Direction, Outside Online

    Outside Online

  • Parents Magazine Single Parent Budgeting Tips

    Parents Magazine Single Parent Budgeting Tips

    Parents Magazine

  • The Triumphant Quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins

    The Triumphant Quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins

    The T List: New York Times Style Magazine

  • Camping with a Toddler Isn't Easy, but I Promise It's Worth It, Conde Nast Traveler

    Camping with a Toddler Isn't Easy, but I Promise It's Worth It, Conde Nast Traveler
  • The T List, New York Times' T Magazine Newsletter, Toyin Ojih Odutola

    The T List, New York Times' T Magazine Newsletter, Toyin Ojih Odutola
  • "Theresa Chromati's Vivid Prints at the Delaware Contemporary," The T List, New York Times

    "Theresa Chromati's Vivid Prints at the Delaware Contemporary," The T List, New York Times
  • "Love is not a Tally Sheet," The New York Times

    "Love is not a Tally Sheet," The New York Times
  • "Piecing Together the Lives of Enslaved Americans," LitHub

    "Piecing Together the Lives of Enslaved Americans," LitHub
  • Assay, A Journal of Nonfiction Studies

    Assay, A Journal of Nonfiction Studies

    Assay -- The Pen and the Needle:Intersections of Text and Textile in and as Nonfiction

  • Review of Goodbye, Sweet Girl, by Kelly Sundberg

    Book Review: The Courage to Take Care of Ourselves

  • The Volta: Evening Will Come

    "My Hand a Needle: A Stitched Statement"

  • Sewing is Writing is Body is Sewing Roundtable, Naropa University

    Something on Paper, Issue 3, 2016

    Roundtable organized by the author on the theme, "Sewing is Writing is Body is Sewing," exploring connections between making and writing. Invited participants included Jan Johnson, Jen Hofer, Jill Magi, and Elena Berriolo. Presented at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics Conference, October 2014.

  • Interview with John Yau in Los Angeles Review of Books

    Published Oct. 27, 2013. John Yau talks about his recent collection of poetry, Further Adventures in Monochrome, and his life as art critic and writer.

  • 1913: A Journal of Forms / sewing + writing

    "Very Quiet," an excerpt from The Vermont Studio Center Experiments: A Legend in Words & Pictures

  • New Delta Review / sewing and writing

    "Shapes Like Leaves," an excerpt from The Vermont Studio Center Experiments: A Legend in Words and Pictures.

  • Word for Word / sewing + writing

    An excerpt from The Vermont Studio Center Experiments: A Legend in Words and Pictures

  • Yew Journal

    My sewn images accompany poetry by Ariella Ruth

© RACHEL MAY
Website by OtherPeoplesPixels