Linda Hutsell-Manning

Novels Plays Poems Stories

Biography


Linda Hutsell-Manning's writing career spans 46 years and includes poetry, plays, TV, short fiction and novels.

         Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1940, Hutsell-Manning moved with her parents to Southern Ontario, completing high-school in Cobourg. Dreaming of a performing arts career, she studied dance, voice, acting and performed on-stage during her school years. In 1959, she began a Radio and TV Arts course at Ryerson Institute in Toronto. Disappointed by the lack of performance focus, she left the program, married and attended Toronto Teachers College, graduating in 1961.
          After graduation, Hutsell-Manning moved to military radar sites across Canada with her husband, James, who was installing computers (the size of two dozen refrigerators strapped together) on the Norad Pine Tree Defence Line. From 1963 to 1965, she taught eight grades at S.S.#2 Hamilton Township, a one room, one stove, cold water tap elementary school west of Cobourg.
          Her husband's subsequent career changes eventually moved them in 1968 to Guelph, Ontario. Here, with three young children and intending to return teaching, she began courses at the University of Guelph. Two of her Canadian Literature professors, Doug Daymond and Leslie Monkman, strongly encouraged her to pursue a writing career and, after graduating in 1975, with continuing support from her husband and children, she began writing full-time.
          Relocating from Guelph to an old farm house outside Cobourg, she worked on short fiction and poetry while publishing a book review column in The Cobourg Sentinel Star as well as articles in various Canadian magazines, and hosting a Readings series locally.
A twist of imagination gave her intriguing lines that became her first children's book, a story in verse, Wondrous Tales of Wicked Winston, published by Annick Press in1981.
          Five scripts for TVO's Polka Dot Door followed (1981-1993). During this period, appalled by the lack of suitable plays for elementary school productions, she created three juvenile musicals: Freddykid and Seagull Sam, 1982, Merch the Invisible Wizard, 1983 and The Great Zanderthon Takeover, 1984; all produced at Kawartha Summer Festival and still available through Playwrights Canada.
          Two picture books followed: Animal Hours, published by Oxford University Press 1990 and Dinosaur Days, published by Stoddart Publishing 1993. Curent distribution is through Fitzhenry & Whiteside.
          In 1998 & 1999, she travelled to Coburg, Germany and Luxembourg to read and promote her work, as well as research locations for her future juvenile time-travel novel series.
          In 2000, her juvenile play, Marcie Saves the Circus won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition, Alleyway Theatre, Buffalo, NY.
           Hutsell-Manning’s Wonder Horn Time-Travel Series consists of five juvenile novels: Jason and the Wonder Horn, Coteau Books 2002, Jason and the Deadly Diamonds, Coteau Books 2004; Jason and the Portrait Pirates ready for publication, while Jason and the Angel of Mons and the fifth novel (as yet unnamed) are works-in-progress.
          Her two educational children's books Otto Discovers FM, 2006 and Otto Hears Everything, 2005 were written in English for Opticon Denmark, and have been translated into ten languages.
            As well as her ongoing juvenile publications, Hutsell-Manning continued to have poetry and short fiction published in literary magazines and anthologies including Quarry, lichen, Litwit, Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, and Great Canadian Murder and Mystery Stories. A monologue from her play Going it Alone, was published by Nuage Editions in Plays by Women for Solo Performers.
          Her first literary novel, That Summer in Franklin, was published by Second Story Press in 2011, with subsequent promotional book tours across Canada during 2012,reading in book-clubs, bookstores and libraries. She continues to utilize Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter and Linkedin to expand awareness and maintain reader contact.
          A novella, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose, was short-listed in Quattro Books 2014 Novella Competition.
          In 2017, her two act comedy A Certain Singing Teacher, was premiered by VOS Theatre in Cobourg, Ontario, a memoir excerpt “The Front Road School”, was published in Hill Spirits III, by Blue Denim Press and a children’s Christmas story, Finding Moufette, was published electronically by Common Deer Press, Toronto.
          During 2018, a short story, “Balancing Act” appeared online in The Danforth Review and The Tangling of Years, the sequel novel to That Summer in Franklin was completed and edited by a professional editor and submitted for publication with a Western Canada Publisher.
          In October 2019, her creative non-fiction memoir, Fearless and Determined: Two Years Teaching in a One-Room School was published by BLUE DENIM PRESS, Cobourg and lauched at the Northumberland Art Gallery..

For a Listing of Linda's published work from poetry, plays, TV, short fiction and novels to academic texts, click HERE


For details of Linda's entire career, clicking CV will take you to Linda's comprehensive CURRICULUM VITAE

Alternatively, clicking on one of the topic headings below will take you directly to that Section in the CV :

Education Creative Writing Courses / Seminars
Publications Workshops and Readings
Awards Grants
Professional Theatre & Television

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