LYNDA RUTLEDGE STEPHENSON

Lynda Rutledge Stephenson, a native Texan, is a professional writer who's interested in almost everything and who's had the opportunity to tell stories that are almost as broad as her curiosity.

In her 15-year career, besides authoring her own nonfiction and fiction, she's also been a book collaborator, a freelance journalist, a ghostwriter, a travel writer, a restaurant and film reviewer, a website journalist, a copywriter, a book club director, and a college instructor. Her writing has appeared and been reviewed in national publications from coast-to-coast and translated, internationally, for a European news magazine. And recently, her first novel, winner of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Finalist Award, was published: Brave New Wanda (written under Lynda Rutledge).

As a freelance journalist, she's written dozens of articles for magazines and newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Poets & Writers, Houston Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, United Airlines in-flight magazine VisaVis, and Mobil Traveler. She's hang-glided off a small Swiss mountain and swam with endangered sea turtles, petted baby rhinos and dodged hurricanes. Her writing has taken her to Australia, Spain, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Scotland, Hawaii, Mexico, and much of the Caribbean, Dutch West Indies, and Netherlands Antilles. And her travel photographs have appeared with many of her articles.

As an author, beyond her topical comic novel Brave New Wanda, her work is just as eclectic, from literary journalism and memoir to history, and self-help nonfiction: a look at the personal crises of infertility, Give Us A Child (Harper&Row; 1987; Harpercollins/ Zondervan, 1992), reviewed in U.S. News and World Report, Washington Post, and Chicago Sun-Times; an irreverent genealogical writing manual, The CIG Guide on Writing Your Family History (Macmillan, 2000), reviewed in the Chicago Tribune; a two-volume History of the San Diego Zoo. (ZSSD, pre-pub); and her narrative nonfiction work-in-progress Auto Biography, a coming-to-terms mother/daughter story told through a vehicle of vehicles.

As a book collaborator, she's worked with people from all walks of life, from comedians to theologians. Since 1990, she has written over a dozen books as varied as the saga of a Beirut hostage's wife, the memoir of a crisis chaplain at 9/11's Ground Zero experience, the story of the famous house-building organization Habitat for Humanity championed by Jimmy Carter, the biography of a visionary San Diego Zoo director who pioneered today's open, conservation-minded modern zoo, and the story behind the worldwide hospital fleet charity Mercy Ships heralded by such world leaders as Former British Prime Minister John Major. And as a contributing author, she's written on topics from travel (Frommer's America on Wheels) to music (Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music).

An Author's Guild member, she's also won several awards and grants including Ragdale Foundation and Atlantic Center for the Arts residencies, a Squaw Valley Community of Writers' Screenwriting Program scholarship and Sewanee Writers Conference. She's taught throughout her professional career, most specifically at Baylor University, Texas Tech University, and Columbia College Chicago.

••••••••••••••••••••••

A FEW COLLABORATION CREDITS:

— Ships of Mercy with Don Stephens, pre-pub 2005 (Houghton & Stoddard, UK/Nelson, USA), Foreword by Former British Prime Minister John Major

— God @ Ground Zero with Crisis Chaplain Ray Giunta 2002 (Integrity)

— Mister Zoo, The Life and Legacy of Charlie Schroeder, biography of the legendary San Diego Zoo Director 1999(ZSSD)

— Frommer's America on Wheels, Great Lakes & Midwest, contributing author 1997 (MacMillan)

— A Simple, Decent Place to Live with Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity 2000 (Word)

— Beirut Diary with Sis Levin, wife of the CNN Beirut Chief who was one of the Beirut hostages; also the subject of an ABC Movie of the Week “Held Hostage” 1992 (IVP)