Before she became a novelist, Lynda was a professional writer for over 25 years, working as a copywriter, restaurant and film reviewer, book collaborator, nonfiction author, travel writer, and freelance journalist. She petted baby rhinos, snorkeled with endangered sea turtles, hang-glided off a small Swiss mountain, and dodged hurricanes to write articles for national and international publications, such as the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Poets & Writers, Houston Post, San Diego Union-Tribune and many more, her travel photographs often appearing with her work. She's also crafted book-length nonfiction for famous organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and the San Diego Zoo Global (for which she's shown below doing an interview with one of her favorite animals that inspired her new novel West with Giraffes.)
Through those years, though, her creative writing was the place she played and dreamed, where she, as classic short-story writer Flannery O'Connor put it, could "write to discover what I know. She holds an MFA in creative writing, a BA and MA in American literature, and has won awards and residencies from the Illinois Arts Council, Writers League of Texas, Ragdale Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Sewanee Writers Conference. Her debut novel Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale won the 2013 Writers League of Texas Novel of the Year and was adapted into a major French film starring Catherine Deneuve (French title: "La dernière folie de Claire Darling") released in 2019 in France and around the world through 2020. Currently, she lives with her husband and resident dog outside Austin, Texas.
Her bestselling novel, West with Giraffes, named the Texas Center for the Book's (a Library of Congress-affiliate) 2023 Great Read, was inspired by a forgotten true story she discovered about a hurricane-surviving pair of giraffes who were trucked cross-country in little more than a tricked-out truck during the Great Depression turning heads, capturing hearts, and making 500+ headlines along the way. The travel writer in her was enraptured; the creative writer was inspired. And her white board started filling up.
Her new novel is Mockingbird Summer (Jan 2024), a coming of age story set in a 1964 tiny segregated town (with a 2020 ending).
Lynda Rutledge's website
This bio was last updated on 11/11/2023. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
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