Linda Dahl graduated from the University of Wisconsin with an honors degree in Latin American Studies, and went on to work as a freelance journalist in Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil, with a particular interest in the arts. Based in New York since the mid 1970's, her books reflect her interests in the arts and love of research. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen (Pantheon, 1984) was called “a brilliant work of oral history” by Publishers Weekly. Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (Pantheon, 2000), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Haunted Heart: A Biography of Susannah McCorkle (University of Michigan Press, 2006), wrote Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic “is vivacious, tender, saturnine, industrious and deeply intelligent.” Her novel, Gringa in a Strange Land (Robert D. Reed Publishers), won the Writers in the Sky Award for Best Creative Writing of 2010. Linda has just completed a new novel, Cleans Up Nicely, to be published in 2013 by She Writes Press.