Rebecca Rijsdijk

Rebecca is a book maker & storyteller based in Eindhoven. Being born in a working-class family in the eighties, Rebecca soon realized her aspirations lay outside of the factory floor. Like many creatives, Rebecca started dabbling with multiple art forms at a young age. Starting out as a writer, she decided to send herself off to the Academy of Journalism to study written media.

A brain aneurysm put a premature end to her journalistic aspirations, however, and she ended up at the assembly line of a big care home kitchen to figure out what it really was she wanted to put her time towards in terms of a career. Photography and poetry kept her relatively sane during this time.

Rebecca took up photography and started creating her own world as a refuge from the monotone work at the assembly line. After three years of preparing meals for the elderly and scribbling poems on discarded meal cards, she decided to give the Royal Academy of Arts a go. She graduated a couple of years later with a Bachelor of Design (but only after her mentor forced her to go to therapy or leave the academy). While writing her thesis in which she revived a bunch of dead authors, she rediscovered her love for the written word again and a passion for poetry is born.

After art school made her sick of the art/literary world and the politics and bullshit that came with it, Rebecca moved to London to pursue a career in healthcare.

In her free time, she kept writing shitty poems on the internet and published four poetry collections revolving around trauma and healing. Despite these books being smashed to bits by critics, she kept going with her middle finger waving loudly in the air.

Rebecca started working with poets, mentoring them as an editor while they developed their craft, and designing their covers and book interiors for them at her indie poetry press called Sunday Mornings at the River. She pays the bills by caring for the elderly and creating albums for wedding photographers.