Amy Smith Linton

Amy Smith Linton grew up poor in a storytelling family in Northern New York. A lucky streak with standardized testing and a certain familiarity with making ends meet got her a bachelor's degree in English from Cornell University.

She attended the University of Denver’s Publishing Institute, headed to Manhattan, and worked for three years for Farrar Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers, lunching with the likes of Madeleine L’Engle, Jerry Selden, and Satoshi Kitamura, and crossing paths with Isaac Singer, Susan Sontag, Scott Turow, and a pale, pale Tom Wolfe –– then midstream Bonfire of the Vanities.

She left Manhattan publishing to live near her extended family in Florida and took up a whirlwind set of part-time jobs that included sailing correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times, office manager for a retirement-planning firm, first mate on a passenger ferry, book reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly and The Tampa Tribune, freelance editor, wallpaper hanger, marine varnish tech, and a half-a-dozen other unlikely occupations.

A stint in corporate life as editor and writer of adult training material gave her a taste of product development, stand-up training, video production, and corporate in-fighting.

She currently focuses on fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Rosebud magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Stonecoast Review, 4'33", Halfway Down the Stairs, and more.

When not writing, she races small sailboats with her husband, Jeff Linton. Her team won the World Championships in the Lightning Class twice, and the North American Flying Scot Championship seven times. She was short-listed for the U.S. Sailing/Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year.

She is working on her next novel.