Rebecca Grove Munson was born in 1984 and became a writer at the age of four, when she sat on her dad’s lap and typed HI BIG PIG on the computer screen. This was followed by the dictated story The Grocery Store Mystery, whichappeared in the Wilson School Thistle and so became her first publication. In the fourth grade, she started a newspaper, but she soon found that she preferred making up stories to reporting them.
During her many years of education, Rebecca always found time to write. At John Burroughs School in St. Louis, she was co-editor of The World, the student newspaper; an editor of the literary magazine, The Review; and a contributor to The Governor, the yearbook.In the ninth grade, she started her first novel, The Winds of Time. Encouraged by the responses of her friends, she continued working on it for the next three years. Rebecca’s lyrics for the Christmas song “Frozen Teardrops Fall” were set to music by Stuart McIntosh and performed at her school and at other venues.
During summer breaks while in high school and college, Rebecca worked as a technician in a laboratory researching breast cancer at Washington University Medical School. She learned such esoteric skills as how to run a gel and perform a polymerase chain reaction. Her interest in science never overshadowed her interest in writing, and she continued to write stories during the summer, several of which appeared in online publications. Her story “Sometimes” was published in the July 2001 edition of Young Writer Magazine (London).
Rebecca graduated with Honors from Burroughs in 2002, and in 2006 she earned an A.B. from Columbia University. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with Departmental Honors in English. During her undergraduate years, she was Senior Staff Writer for the Columbia Daily Spectator. She founded and was later elected president of the Nobel Kinsmen, a group for the dramatic reading and discussion of Shakespeare. Under the tutelage of Arnold Weinstein, the librettist for the opera version of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, she wrote her first dramatic scenes. But her real love was for narrative fiction, and before graduating, she finished the first draft of her novel Someday Never Comes.
Rebecca spent her next year at Keble College, Oxford, pursuing her interest in Shakespeare and early modern drama. As a member of the Middle Common Room, she made new friends and enjoyed the social and intellectual life of Oxford. She lived in college rooms, wore her gown to elaborate dinners, punted on the Isis, and drank at the Eagle and Child, the pub where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis met to discuss their stories. She lived the sort of Oxford life she had read about, but when she was not in lectures or out for fun, she was conducting research in her favorite location, the Duke Humphrey Library, a collection of manuscripts and books housed in the Bodleian Library. Fans of the Harry Potter movies, of which Rebecca was one, would immediately recognize the setting.
In 2007, Rebecca graduated and received a Master’s degree with Distinction from Oxford. Continuing on the academic path, she next earned a Ph.D. with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014. While a graduate student, her Shakespeare research was supported, in part, by grants from Harvard University, Yale University, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses and working on her dissertation, she completed the short novel Jane Doe-22, which was a contender for the Paris Literary Prize.
After graduating from Berkeley, Rebecca spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow, first at the University of California, Los Angeles, then at Emory University. She was an enthusiastic teacher, and at both institutions, in addition to doing her own research, she was able to teach courses that allowed her to draw on her deepening knowledge of literature.
At the end of her last fellowship, Rebecca joined the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University in a position that combined administration, research, and teaching. Eager to learn more about the new discipline, she returned to Oxford and earned a certificate in digital research. Soon after, she was promoted to become Assistant Director of the CDH. Pursuing her own research, she established a database of Shakespearean marginalia and presented papers on Shakespeare at the Folger Library and academic conferences.
In 2018, at the age of thirty-four, Rebecca was diagnosed with triple-negative metastatic breast cancer, the most aggressive form of the disease. Displaying steely determination and no hint of self-pity, she continued to work, teach, and write. Characteristically, she cofounded the online support group Young and Strong at Dana-Farber Cancer Center, where she was treated. She also began writing the blog Pitiless Achilles, which chronicled her experiences with breast cancer.
Even after her diagnosis, Rebecca stayed in touch with her friends and continued to make new ones. Although the COVID pandemic was in full force, her friends came to her aid, accompanying her to chemotherapy sessions, doing her grocery shopping, or sometimes just having a socially distanced drink with her on her patio. Thanks to their kindness, she was saved from isolation.
That Rebecca was intelligent is obvious from her educational accomplishments, that she was beautiful can be seen from a glance at her photograph, that she was talented is clear from her writing. But her sharp wit, ready warmth, natural kindness, unbridled capacity for friendship, and iron-clad loyalty to those close to her can only be appreciated by those who knew her.
As an only child growing up, she treated her dogs almost as if they were siblings, and Cookie, Captain, Shadow, Skipper, and Scout all returned her love and demonstrations of affection. Yet during her last months, it was her cat Percy who supplied her with the immediate love and reassurance she had always valued in her animal friends.
Rebecca died in her childhood home in the early hours of August 13, 2021. That it was Friday the 13th would have amused her. Before going to sleep, she and her parents had watched an episode of The Gilmore Girls, one of her favorite shows. Her parents remained with her during the night.
The top of the Indiana limestone bench dedicated to Rebecca’s memory at John Burroughs School reads
A flash of lightening . . . Brilliant, Electrifying, Brief
Yet it is the inscription along the edge in words suggested by her friends that best captures the person Rebecca was
Kind Loving Funny Beautiful Talented
Loved By Her Friends Adored By Her Parents And Her Dogs
At this point Rebecca might say: Bid the soldiers shoot.
Labrador Books 