About the Author

The Rev. Melissa A. Chappell is a native of South Carolina. She attended Newberry College and graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Theory and a minor in Religion. After graduation she enrolled in The Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, then located in Columbia, SC where she studied for a Master of Divinity degree. During her four years there, she spent a considerable amount of time on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina. While there, she became familiar with the systemic struggles faced by the Cherokees as well as other native peoples. She participated fully in native life there, learning to incorporate Cherokee ritual with traditional Lutheran worship.

Her internship year was spent in the inner city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This afforded her the opportunity to explore a new and different context than the one in which she grew up. It was an extraordinary year. Her most important learning was that, when all was said and done, she was the one who, by far, benefited the most from her time there. The people she came to serve, were her greatest teachers.

Returning to seminary, Chappell completed her fourth and final year with the honor of being awarded the Walter Harlowe Greever Award for Excellence in Preaching.

Upon graduating in 1996, she received a call to St. James Lutheran Church in Chilhowie, Virginia, which is located in the mountains of southwest Virginia. At St. James she not only preached but served as director of the choir, and occasional pianist. Sometimes all at once! She could never have imagined more wonderful people to be called by God to love and serve. The people at St. James were extraordinarily dedicated to the mnistry of the gospel, and they will not be soon forgotten, if ever.

Chappell was later appointed as interim minister at St. John’s, Abingdon, where she served for a time. St. John’s, also, was a congregation with many gifts, and many gifted people who continue to spread the good seeds of Christ’s loving word to neighbors far and wide.

Chappell began writing after her return home in 2005, but her work did not see publication until 2018, with Rivers and Relics, a book of poetry published by Desert Willow Press. Since then she has become widely published, with six chapbooks, and more than 65 poems in literary journals, magazines and reviews. She has also published four reviews of poetry collections, and is full of hope for her first full collection of poetry, Countries Yet to Come.