About the Author

Dr. Linda Tate comes from a family of proud Wellstonians: mother Bonnie Landsbury Burrows, aunt Louise Landsbury Overbey, and grandparents Marie Manley Landsbury and Arthur Landsbury. Linda had the rare privilege of spending part of her 1960s childhood with her grandparents in Wellston.

Budding author Linda Tate on the S.S. Admiral with the Gateway Arch in the background. Note the folder she is carrying — for all her writing notes!

The author of Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative, an award-winning book that traces the history of her paternal family, Linda is fascinated by the stories of the family past. She believes firmly that tracing one’s family experience leads to much deeper understanding of our collective past. Responses to Power in the Blood suggest that she’s onto something. Best-selling novelist Lee Smith praised the book, saying “I think Power in the Blood is a remarkable memoir. This is a big, human, and entirely revelatory book.” Story Circle Book Reviews deemed the book “a literary masterpiece,” and the Feast e-zine chose it as one of the best nonfiction books for 2009, calling it “lively and compelling.” Power in the Blood won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for Creative Nonfiction and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

Now it’s time to explore her maternal family. To that end, Linda is currently conducting research for a forthcoming book, Ferguson Girl: A Story of Family, Place, and Race. Wellston — just a couple of communities over from Ferguson — will figure prominently in the book, as Linda tells the tale of white flight from St. Louis’s inner-ring suburbs and those suburbs’ subsequent decay. Linda will the tell story of growing up as a white girl in the 1960s and 1970s in hypersegregated St. Louis.

“The Wellston Loop” website provides the history of Wellston, and the accompanying blog traces Linda’s research on Wellston, St. Louis, and related subjects. In the blog, Linda looked at Wellston past and present, the St. Louis streetcar system (with an emphasis on the Hodiamont line), the crumbling infrastructure of the City of St. Louis and inner-ring suburbs (as well as efforts to revitalize the City and those older suburbs), and anything else that caught her eye. Now that Linda has moved on to researching Ferguson, she no longer posts new entries to “The Wellston Loop” blog, but readers should still find the past blog posts meaningful.

Former Professor of English at West Virginia’s Shepherd University and former faculty member in the University of Denver’s Writing Program, Linda is also the author of A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South and the editor of Conversations with Lee Smith. A Southern Weave of Women was chosen as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book in 1995, and Conversations with Lee Smith was published as part of the University Press of Mississippi’s Literary Conversations Series.

These days, Linda works as an independent scholar and freelance writer. To learn more about the writing, editing, training, project development, and meeting planning services she offers, visit the Tate Communications website. Linda lives with her husband Jim in Boulder, Colorado. She may be reached by sending her a message here.