Life is about the chase . . .

Rachelle Chase lives those words. From learning to ride a motorcycle and joining a motorcycle club to quitting her job and moving to South America, from majoring in biology in college to working as a claims adjuster, programmer analyst, owner of a multicultural software products business, a model, and a business analyst, she believes in chasing her dreams and goals until she attains them—or they change.

One thing that has never changed is her love of books. She started her writing career writing sexy romances, but in 2008 she discovered Buxton, Iowa thanks to her former romance writing instructor and friend, Leigh Michaels. By January 2017 she’d written, sold, and released her first nonfiction book, LOST BUXTON. In 2019, her second one, CREATING THE BLACK UTOPIA OF BUXTON, IOWA followed. On June 1, 2022, it was included in NPR’s Summer Reads list. Rachelle’s currently working on two historical fiction books—one for middle grade students—and a screenplay and hopes to write more about Buxton at her neglected LostBuxton.com.

As a speaker, Rachelle has been touring Iowa and beyond, giving more than 100 presentations—many to standing-room-only crowds—on Buxton, Iowa. She’s also given workshops on writing, created and co-hosted an online writing contest for writers (which resulted in numerous writers landing agents and book deals) and hosted two popular podcasts featuring bestselling authors.

As a result, she’s appeared in documentaries, most recently, “Telling Our Story: Black History” on Iowa PBS and KYOU’s “Remembering Buxton” as well as on local and national television. Past appearances include WHOTV Channel 13 (Des Moines), KTVO Virtual Channel 3, NJTV with Senator Cory Booker, CBS (San Francisco), and New York’s “The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet” – plus local and national radio shows, including Iowa Public Radio (2017, 04/2019, 12/2019, 2021, and 2022), “BLM and Buxton on In Depth with Dr. Bob Leonard“, KBIZ (Ottumwa, IA), KRUUFM.com’s “Writers’ Voices,” and more.

Her recent adventures include becoming an opinion columnist for the Des Moines Register (March 2022), completing Emerge Iowa (Class of 2020), an exciting program for women who plan to run for public office, and working as the Waterloo Reporter for Iowa Starting Line (2020). She’s incredibly excited to have launched her first nonprofit, Uniting Through History, in February 2021.

For the latest updates, Rachelle invites you to subscribe to her mailing list.