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Archive

On this page you'll find older essays, reviews, obsessions, links to my radio plays, and more. I hope you enjoy exploring.
My Writing Room in Mochlos, Crete ---  See my essay here on substack https://lindalappin.substack.com/p/islomania

“Signatures in Stone undermines the reader's confidence and challenges her perspective. Lappin's sharp, precise prose with touches of lyricism and irony is a perfect match for her heroine who irritates and delights us with her shortcomings and her skewed brilliance."  --B.Zaczek, SCR

 

 

THE ENIGMATIC MUSE OF BOMARZO. A ZOOM EVENT

Despite park closures and travel restrictions, I revisited the Sacred Grove of Bomarzo recently in virtual mode with historical author Mary Jane Cryan and novelists Teresa Cutler-Broyles and Gigi Pandian, who have all written about the fantastic sculpture garden and its eerie giants. That labyrinth of stones and moss  provided the inspiration for SIGNATURES IN STONE. We organized a zoom event to discuss how this place inspired our writing. You can view the edited presentation here. The Enigmatic Muse of Bomarzo.

 

Linda recently collaborated with Edward E French, the award-winning make-up artist who moonlights as a narrator of audio books. Ed has narrated a section of Signatures in Stone for his youtube channel. The episode takes place in the garden of Bomarzo when Daphne and Professor Finestone discover the Hell Mouth while exploring the meaning of the grotesque statues. Click below to hear Ed's superb narration against the backdrop of the Bomarzo sculpture garden.


 

THE SOUL OF PLACE–

A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises
for Conjuring the Genius Loci

By Linda Lappin
Published by Travelers' Tales, 2015
isbn: 978-1609521035,

"Insightful exercises help creative writers of all levels attune themselves to the power of place in order to churn out evocative prose that jumps off the page." National Geographic Intelligent Traveler

MORE PRAISE FROM READERS & WRITERS FOR LINDA LAPPIN'S
THE SOUL OF PLACE


"Inspirational...Lovely...Explorative,"Book Riot
"A great new resource for writers" Dr. Jessie Voigts, Wandering Educators
"A conscious way to explore the power of place" WanderLit
"This book will change your writing" Wandering Educators

“Invaluable advice for the writer and traveler, deeply thoughtful.” –Lavinia Spalding, author of Writing Away

BACK IN PRINT AT LAST!

KATHERINE’S WISH
By Linda Lappin
A novel about the life of Katherine Mansfield
Wordcraft of Oregon, 2008
Paperback, 225 pages, isbn 978-1-877-655 586
Distributed by INGRAMS, Available from AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE


In this dramatic, fictional retelling of New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield’s final years, novelist Linda Lappin captures the rainbow-like essence of Mansfield’s being, transporting the reader like a time traveler into her intimate world. Scrupulously researched and richly evocative, the novel has been praised by Mansfield scholars as “creative scholarship.” With vivid detail and beautiful language and style, Lappin has built on journals, letters, and diaries to fashion a true-to-life mosaic, using themes, motifs, and methods of Mansfield’s own writing. Katherine’s Wish celebrates Mansfield’s deep love of life and its final message is a life –affirming one of joy and of wholeness achieved. A must for libraries, research centers, and book clubs interested in women writers, Bloomsbury, Katherine Mansfield, and modernism, as well as those interested in Mansfield’s contacts with George Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

“A dazzling bit of literary sorcery,” advance praise from David Lynn, editor, the Kenyon Review.

“The more Katherine Mansfield approaches death, the more she comes to life in Linda Lappin’s Katherine’s Wish…Lappin’s achievement is to succeed where medicine failed and, through her words, give Katherine Mansfield ongoing life.”
Walter Cummins, the Literary Review

“Capturing the latter part of Katherine’s life and world, the author brings vivid life to this novel, which reads like a literary biography of Katherine Mansfield
and her contemporaries.” - Tess Allegra, The Historical Novels Review

“[Lappin’s] writing style, with its rhythm, flow, and sensual detail, richly evokes the significant social scene of a vanished era….Katherine’s Wish is first and foremost the compelling story of an artist fighting against time. Long after the last page, thoughts of her linger like an exotic scent.” Rain Taxi

“An intriguing and highly recommended piece of writing.” Midwest Book Review

Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne,(2020) a novel, and an essay:
Missing Person in Montparnasse:
The Case of Jeanne Hebuterne

For over eighty years after her suicide, Jeanne's
family tried to conceal her connection to the last
great painter of Montmartre, and to hide her
artworks from the world. This essay
reconstructs the brief life and intense
work of an artist whose drawings and paintings
were first viewed in October 2000. Published in The Literary Review, Summer 2002, "Missing Person in Montparnasse" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize

The Ghosts of Fontainebleau

This essay explores Katherine Mansfield's
sojourn at George I. Gurdjieff's Institute
for the Harmonious Development of Man
in Fontainebleau.