Local writer, Linda Malcolm, has been accepted to the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Malcolm will be one of approximately sixteen writers attending the two-week non-fiction workshop, “Memoir and Personal Essay,” taught by Phillip Lopate, long-time professor in the MFA non-fiction writing program at Columbia University in New York City.

Throughout the last nine years, Malcolm has been writing creative non-fiction. Ebbing and flowing between parent and writer, she writes short personal essays on subjects ranging from deep-sea fishing and canning tomatoes to death and laundry.

“I have dutifully posted over 400 essays in my ‘online storage unit,’ www.lindamalcolm.com,” Malcolm said.  “This year, I am stepping out of my small readership in search of a larger audience.  At the Writers Institute, I will be working on a collection of essays to be published in my first book later this year.

“Born in Iowa, I was raised on a dairy farm surrounded by cornfields.  Now, I live north of Boston and write about life, one slice at a time.  I believe the little things in life are the most joyful, the most humorous, and the most over-looked.  They are the seeds for my writing.  The juxtaposition of cultures, peoples, and places drives the shape of my essays.”

The New York State Writers Institute, established in 1984 by award-winning novelist William Kennedy at the University at Albany, SUNY, will hold its 32nd annual summer program July 2 - 27, 2018. Under the joint auspices of the Office of the Dean of Special Programs at Skidmore College and the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany, the summer program is held on the campus of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and will feature creative writing workshops in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. An extraordinary staff of distinguished writers, among them winners of such major honors as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, serve as Institute faculty members. 

For more information or to receive Malcolm’s weekly essays, contact her at linda@lindamalcolm.com.

(How did this leg of the journey begin?  Like this...)