Vicki Lindner

At 15 Vicki Lindner published her first story, about banging out her hatred of her mother and brother on the piano, in the Girl Scout magazine, American Girl. While still in high school, she began working as a social editor and community reporter for small New Jersey newspapers. After earning a B.A. in literature from Bard College, and an M.A. from Sarah Lawrence in Modern French Fiction, she began publishing in literary magazines, including The Paris Review and Fiction. Living in rent-controlled apartments on the Lower East Side, then a bedbug-infested Bowery loft, she wrote novels and stories while freelancing for magazines like Cosmopolitan and Omni and worked on collaborative book projects for publishing companies. When she had extra cash she traveled, often alone, to foreign countries, ultimately visiting 39. In 1988, after publishing a novel, Outlaw Games, and winning a National Endowment for the Arts in Fiction and a second New York State fiction Fellowship, she moved to Wyoming where she taught creative writing to undergraduates, graduates, and MFA students for twenty years, eventually winning a prestigious university-wide teaching prize. Once in the West, she continued freelancing, but intrigued by the possibilities for creative nonfiction, began writing personal essays about everything from birdwatching to teaching traumatized students, as well as short fiction. She recently finished a ‘sixties memoir, Baby, It’s You.  She has enjoyed teaching at Lighthouse for the last ten years.