From David A. Hall of Mesa, Arizona

Rachel

In 2005, Rachel graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN in English Literature. She has also taken classes in Italian and Greek. She had the good fortune of being able to study abroad in Rome for the Winter Semester, 2004. Click here to see those photographs: Rachel’s semester abroad in Italy.

She then spent several years living in Burlington, Vermont, first working as a section manager at the Burlington Barnes & Noble bookstore and then working in a local hospital. She has done some copy writing for a marketing company and has done some book critiquing and some book editing for her dad’s publishing company.

From 2008 to 2010, Rachel attended the University of Iowa, graduating in May 2010 with a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She accepted a job in Lawrence, Kansas, at a public library.

She then became engaged to Aaron Smalter, and they were married on September 18, 2010 in Lawrence. Here is a link to their wedding website, though you won’t be able to access it without a registered username and password. Rachel has known Aaron since high school, but didn’t begin dating him until she came back to the Midwest from Vermont.

Aaron has a PhD in computer science from the University of Kansas and when this was first written had a research position at the University. Rachel worked as a librarian in Lawrence and then Johnson County, Kansas for several years. In October, 2014 they became the parents of a baby boy. Rachel then worked from home for the book review website, Book Riot and Aaron then got a job as an analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

From there they ended up with jobs in Manhattan – Aaron at the Federal Reserve, and Rachel as an editor for Amazon’s audio book division, Audible. They added a baby girl to their family.

Click here to read Rachel’s blog.