Meet Judith Lindbergh | Novelist, Entrepreneur, Creative Writing Mentor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Judith Lindbergh and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Judith, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Everything I have ever done professionally has been a risk. I started my career as a dancer—not only the lowest paid profession according to US employment statistics, but among the shortest lived. After several years of dancing, mostly in Off-Off-Broadway and touring shows, I got tired of being in the background and shifted my attention to acting. But a dancer’s resume doesn’t earn a lot of respect when you’re auditioning for Shakespeare. I ended up working at temp jobs in offices in New York City. Bored to death, I started filling my spare time writing letters, then short stories, and eventually, my first, very bad novel. It could have all come to nothing if not for persistence and the incredible good fortune of a small group of writerly friends I met along the way. I finished what became my debut novel, The Thrall’s Tale, about women in Viking Age Greenland, a few years later. It sold to my friend’s editor at Viking (an imprint of Penguin Random House) after that same friend’s agent represented me. Years later, we are together again at Regal House Publishing. My new novel, Akmaral, about a nomad woman warrior on the ancient Asian steppes, comes out in May 2024. But between those two novels were years of writing with almost no income. I had to do something! So I started teaching creative writing to some of the children in my community. I never planned to start a business, but the program blossomed almost all by itself. Now The Writers Circle (https://writerscircleworkshops.com/) has been in business for almost fourteen years. All our instructors are published writers, and we teach classes online and in-person to students from ages 8 to over 80. The Writers Circle kept me alive and in touch with my creativity while I wrote my new book, and a couple of others that I hope will be published soon.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Nothing about the creative life is easy, and I’ve had at least three creative professions so far. I write literary historical fiction about people, places, and times that most readers know little about. This requires a great deal of research to discover the facts behind the stories, and to dig up the stories from the artifacts—sometimes, quite literally. I imbue my writing with a poetic sensibility that to me feels authentic to the characters and their worlds. I don’t love historical fiction that sounds contemporary. I want my readers to slip back into the past and feel like they’ve been transported.

In a way, my experience as dancer and actor helped me understand the long hours and dedication required to become a writer. Like a dancer at the barre, you must go to your computer every day. You must write when you don’t feel like it and when you’re not inspired. Sometimes you feel that your work is brilliant, only to discover that you hate it the very next day. And sometimes the rough writing slowly forms into something truly magical, that you read back months later and say, “Wow, how did I write that?”

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m not from Arizona, but I’ve been there several times and my son attended Arizona State, so I feel like I have a connection there. Years ago, my husband and I stayed for a time in Sedona. This was before everything built up. I remember the uncrowded streets and the original pink jeeps. We took a tour of the Sinagua ruins and found our way to an unmarked petroglyph newspaper wall we had heard about from a local. And we hiked Oak Creek Canyon and out to the Seven Sacred Pools. I wrote a travel article about the trip for a now defunct magazine. (My son blames me personally for the tourist metropolis that Sedona has become.) Still, whenever we visit, we head up to the Mesa Grill at the Sedona Airport. My husband has always loved small airports, so we seek out places like this wherever we go. The food is delicious and the view of the red rocks from the mesa with the small airplanes taking off and landing is unique.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My very first creative writing instructor was Madeleine L’Engle, the author of the children’s classic, A Wrinkle in Time. Her approach to teaching was gentle, encouraging, and supportive of even the lowliest writer in the group. No matter who was in her class, we felt welcomed and accepted; and we learned. While I only studied with her briefly, I learned how to share the work of writing in a similarly compassionate way. And from her class grew the core of my own writers’ circle, which is what inspired my company’s name.

Website: https://judithlindbergh.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/judithlindbergh/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-lindbergh-5a6b724/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JudithLindbergh

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/judith.lindbergh

Other: https://judithlindbergh.substack.com/

Image Credits
Sedona, AZ photo (c) Judith Lindbergh