Linda Hutsell-Manning’s writing career spans forty years and includes an impressive variety of genres including poetry, plays, TV, short fiction and novels. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1940, she moved to Ontario at age nine and, after Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and Toronto Teachers’ College, taught for two years in a one-room school between Cobourg and Port Hope, Ontario. She subsequently attended the University of Guelph as a mature student, graduating with a B.A. in 1975. Encouraged by two university professors, she began writing full time in 1981.

 

She has worked as a free-lance journalist; taught creative writing at several community colleges and hosted an author reading series. In the first twenty years, she published primarily juvenile fiction including three picture books, three juvenile plays, two time-travel novels and scripts for TVO’s Polka Dot Door. During this time, she gave countless school/library workshops across Canada as well as in Germany and Luxembourg.

 

In 2011, her literary novel, That Summer in Franklin, was published by Second Story Press; its sequel, The Tangling of Years, is waiting to be published. Her two-act comedy, A Certain Singing Teacher premiered with VOS Theatre in 2017. A memoir, Fearless and Determined: Two Years Teaching in a One-Room School, was published in 2019. She is currently working on a second memoir, In Spite of... chronicling her unorthodox childhood and a poetry collection, Falling into Light.  Since Covid, she has learned Power Point and given readings, seminars and school presentations via ZOOM. During 2022, she has, again, given live memoir readings with a school presentation scheduled for September.

 

Married with three adult children, she has four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She has lived in many Canadian communities from Kamloops, BC to Cobourg, Ontario, where she now makes her home, writing in the attic office of a century farmhouse. More information about Linda’s publications can be found at www.lindahutsellmanning.ca