Linda Lightsey Rice

Linda Lightsey Rice is an award-winning novelist, essayist, teacher, speaker, and former journalist who began her career in the New York City publishing industry. She is the author of the novel SOUTHERN EXPOSURE and has taught writing at the University of Tennessee, Lenoir Rhyne University, the Chautauqua Institution, the College of St. Catherine, and the Loft Literary Center. She gives creativity and writing workshops all over the US and was the 2004 winner of the McKnight Foundation Fellowship in Creative Prose.

Linda Lightsey Rice offers manuscript review/​editing and tutoring/​coaching for beginning and intermediate writers. Included among those she has privately coached are Anne Ursu, author of the novels SPILLING CLARENCE and THE DISAPPARATION OF JAMES, and Brian McDermott, author of TIME OUT FOR LEADERS and LEADING INNOVATION.

She hosts private writing workshops in Minneapolis and is also available for weekend workshops and for speaking about writing, about women's issues and creativity, and about mental illness and creativity. She has published articles about literary voice, about artistic apprenticeship, about artists as teachers, about race and sex in writing, and given workshops on voice and storytelling.

CONTACT: For more information contact the author via the e-mail address in the box below right.

Linda Lightsey Rice's novel SOUTHERN EXPOSURE is rooted in the Southern storytelling tradition. Born in Charleston, the author grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, in the historic inner city Elmwood Park neighborhood. It was there, at age 10, that this daughter of a high school English teacher and granddaughter of a landscape painter, decided to become a writer.

After earning her BA in English, chosen among applicants from all over the country, she accepted an editorial job in publishing in New York. At Doubleday she worked for editor Betty Prashker, noted for publishing important feminist writers. Before and after New York, the author was a staff writer for THE STATE newspaper in South Carolina and for THE RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH in Virginia, reporting on the arts and writing book reviews. (Not to mention an enlightening month writing obits.)

She left journalism to obtain an MA in English/​Creative Writing then completing the Ph.D. coursework. While teaching high school English, she was nearly fired from a Catholic girls school for teaching rock music as poetry. She began teaching college English and creative writing, especially fiction writing, publishing stories and essays in literary journals. Next came SOUTHERN EXPOSURE, which garnered excellent reviews, was selected by The Literary Guild, nominated for the PEN Hemingway, and sold nearly 50,000 copies.

Linda Lightsey Rice has published stories and essays in "Poets and Writers," "Spectacle," "Phoenix," "Southern Arts Review," "Minnesota Women's Press", etc. Most recently her work has appeared in "The American South" anthology published in Germany. At the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis she was Artistic Mentor of both the Inroads Series and the Mentor Series, and was awarded the Minnesota Writers Career Initiative Fellowship. She has read from her work in all parts of the US and in Ireland. (This includes a reading in a bowling alley and another in a coffee shop that was part car wash. Very interesting honorariums.) Following her commencement address at the University of South Carolina/​ Allendale, a scholarship was named in her honor.

She was Writer in Residence at Lenoir Rhyne University and has given presentations/​workshops for Virginia Commonwealth University's MFA writing program, the University of Wisconsin writing program, the East Tennessee Association of English teachers, the keynote address for Women's History Month at Spartanburg Methodist College, writing workshops at Hiwassee College and Lander College and Roane State Community College, among others. She has won a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, and artistic awards/​ fellowships from Virginia Commonwealth University, the South Carolina Humanities Commission, the Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and the Hawthornden Castle International Centre for Writers in Scotland.