Bio
Rebecca Chace is the award-winning author of the novel Leaving Rock Harbor, a New York Times “Editor’s Choice”, New England Books Award Finalist, June Indie Notable Book (ABA); the novel Capture the Flag ; and the memoir, Chautauqua Summer, which was a New York Times “Notable Book," as well as “Editor's Choice" and "Picks for Summer" in the New York Times Book Review. Her first children’s book, June Sparrow and the Million Dollar Penny, was published in May, 2017.
Capture the Flag was adapted as a feature length screenplay by Rebecca and director Lisanne Skyler. The short film, with screenplay co-written by Chace and Skyler, was shot during the summer of 2009; it premiered at the Aspenshortsfest International Competition in April, 2010, and received the Tony Cox Showtime Award for best screenplay (Short Film) at the Nantucket Film Festival in 2010. The feature length screenplay adaptation was shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. Rebecca is currently developing a television pilot based upon the novel.
Photo by Allen Frame
Rebecca is also an actor, has moonlighted as a trapeze artist and likes to occasionally swing flaming torches. Her plays include: Colette (Theatre for the New City) in which she played Colette and hung from a trapeze. Her adaptation of Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, was produced by Book-It Repertory Theatre at the Seattle Repertory Theatre; second production at Seattle Rep. in June, 2005; third production with “Voices of the South", Memphis TN, 2015.
Rebecca has been honored by many fellowships and residencies including the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Mid-Atlantic Artistic Fellowship), Dora Maar House, Jentel, Frances Shaw Fellowship at the Ragdale Foundation, Grace Paley Fiction Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center; the Wertheim Study at the New York Public Library (2014-16). Her theatre work has received support from A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, A.S.K. Theatre Projects in Los Angeles, the FringeACT festival and New York Theatre Workshop. She is the program manager at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College and a member of the core faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
One of her favorite things is to write songs with her songwriting partner, Al Maddy, and sing with The Sequoias.