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Rebecca Jung is a writer and poet who currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
She earned her B.A. in English writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.A. in art history from Kent State University.
Her work has been published in literary magazines, including: Sky Island Journal, Memoir, The Impetus, Pennsylvania Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Evening Street Review, Postcards Poetry and Prose, Not Very Quiet, The Write Launch, Prometheus Dreaming, Purple Clover, The Bangalore Review, and Drunk Monkeys.
Her work has also appeared in two books: Along These Rivers: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh, and Burningword Ninety-Nine, A Selected Anthology of Poetry, 2001-2011, and many other anthologies.
Her chapbook, “Home Leave,” is available here. The chapbook is an excerpt from her full-length memoir in progress.
From Canton, Ohio, to Bukavu in the Belgian Congo, just in time for the war for independence, "Home Leave" is the memoir of a Third Culture Kid in the 1950s and 60s. In a span of ten years, the author and her family lived in eight different countries and five different continents, with no ownership or identification to any of them.
But when "Where are you from?" is a trick question, you have a monkey named Krushchev, and checking yourself for chiggers is the highlight of the week, you can claim ownership of compassionate humor—the most important global language there is.
While about war and political upheavals, "Home Leave" is more about how people don't lose their humanity in brutal, foreign settings where everyone is scrambling to survive. People who, in spite of cultural and national differences, are driven to help others, often risking their own lives. Those people who aren't in history books.