Linda Lappin

I write literary fiction with a strong sense of place, influenced by the areas where I have lived and traveled extensively: Italy, France, and Greece. My novels also have a marked historical focus—and are mainly set in the early twentieth century, with women artists and writers as the narrators and/or main characters. Sometimes my narrators are well-known historical figures, like Katherine Mansfield or Jeanne Hébuterne; while others are fictional composites. I try to recreate accurate historical settings and stick to known biographical details based on thorough research, as I did in my novel about K. Mansfield's life, Katherine's Wish, which has been called "creative scholarship." But sometimes my work is "genre-bending," mixing at times elements of gothic, fantasy, myth, suspense, mystery and magical realism into the sturdy pot of historical fiction and fictional biography. My books have won prizes and honorable mentions in the small press circuit: Ippy, Nautilus, New York Book Festival, Paris Book Festival, Foreword, Eric Hoffer. My mystery tale, SIGNATURES IN STONE won the overall prize for Best Mystery in the Daphne DuMaurier award in 2014. My newest novel is LOVING MODIGLIANI: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne. My favorite themes include travel and displacement, quests and loss, the search for self and the search for home. The essence of my reading, writing, traveling, and research has led me to realize that places inhabit us just as we inhabit them. They may have personality, emotion, agency, and the power to transform lives. They transmit stories and imagery across time, which we can receive, elaborate, and transmit again in our own new form. That is the essence of what I try to convey in THE SOUL OF PLACE, a creative writing guide for writers of all genres, dealing with the ways our connection to place can inspire our creativity.