Linda B Morganstein

I’m an overeducated writer/artist who also happens to be the product of a Borscht Belt childhood in the Catskills. My father was a charismatic and emotionally reckless maître d’ in a few world famous hotels. My mother was a waitress who channeled Marilyn Monroe. As a child, I did the cha-cha and drank Shirley Temples in cocktail lounges. Everyone I knew was a story-teller. My friends were bartenders and female impersonators. Still, I read everything in the local library without (thank you, librarian) much censorship, including Freud, Nabokov, Steinbeck and Agatha Christie.
I escaped on scholarship to Vassar, then dropped out and drove a VW bus to California, where I lived in the Bay Area and Sonoma County for many years. Much later, I studied with Jane Smiley at Iowa State University. Eventually, I made my way to Minnesota. I currently reside in Saint Paul, Minnesota with my understanding spouse Melanie and our exceptional dog, Courage. In addition to writing, I am an avid golfer and sourdough bread-baker.

I have five published novels and numerous published short stories and poems.
I am currently at work on a huge project. I have invented a photo-journal that resembles LIFE magazine, called NUMINOSITY. In it, I create all the content, including ads for imaginary products and articles about a movie director, a cultural anthropologist and a radical psychoanalyst, all versions of me. I use complex but playful photo-collaged work for my illustrations, including turning my parents into mythological characters.