Burton is a writer-in-residence in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Wayne State University and co-founder of the program’s Detroit Institute for Creative Writers. Her debut novel, The Root Worker was published in hard cover and paperback by The Overlook Press (2001) and Penguin Putnam (2002), respectively, and was reviewed and featured in 'O' (Oprah) Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Ebony, Essence, Black Issues Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, Madison Times and the Ann Arbor News. The novel was a Great Lakes Book Award finalist in 2001. Ms. Burton is a Michigan regional representative for the International Women’s Writing Guild and workshop director at the Guild’s summer writers’ conferences at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. “Rainelle Burton interweaves African American folklore with religious rumor in a moving and often suspenseful novel that borders on social commentary…(She) brilliantly dances on the border of the grotesque to allow the characters' anguish and innocence to seep into the reader's pores.” - Michelle Gipson in Black Issues Book Review.