Here I am in Paradise - Paradise Harbor, Antarctica, that is.  I’ve been to five continents and have traveled extensively in North America.
 
Born in El Paso, I grew up in Fort Worth, graduated from Rice University (English) and earned my Ph.D. (Theatre) from the University of Minnesota. 

After Minneapolis (marriage, a son, acting, dramaturgy, teaching), I moved to Chicago with my family and joined the Theatre faculty at Northwestern University.  Tenure, divorce, working with professional theatres, and scholarly publishing followed until I left academe for Los Angeles.  There I worked as a Story Analyst for television and film producers.

Following my father’s recent death I returned to Texas to live with my mother.  My son and his family live in the Chicago area.  In Fort Worth I'm active with the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church, Coffee Party Fort Worth, local Democrats, the Gateway Park Advisory Committee, Haltom-Richland alumni from my era, and the White Lake Hills Citizens Patrol (COPS, Code Blue).

In addition to writing and community work, I tutored children 3-8 in the Autism Services clinic of Fort Worth's Child Study Center (2009).
 

Most of all, I write.  I’ve created my own town – Preston Bluff, Texas – a tiny hamlet in the state’s smallest (fictional) county (Preston) in the center of Texas, along the Navasota River.  I write mysteries and “stand-alones” set in Preston Bluff and environs. 

Some of my characters write for the Preston Bluff Dispatch; their tales from the Bluff appear as blog entries and in the Archives.  Others write for the Bluebonnet Bell, the student news-zine of Preston County's Bluebonnet Country Day Academy.

I blogged for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's DonkeyTales08 as an Obama delegate to my county convention.

See http://lindawalshjenkins.typepad.com/ for my Preston Bluff samples, blogs and editorials written for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

In the spring of 2006 Theatre Communications Group published the third edition of Women in American Theatre, which I co-authored and co-edited with Helen Krich Chinoy.  See my Home Page for books currently available through Amazon. 

ARIADNE

 Dionysus found her 
           broken, bleeding
           on the spiny shore
Or
so the story goes

But Ariadne knows

She lifted herself alone

She combed her hair

And scattered seeds

She sang with birds

And healed the lonely

island with the

power that had

always been hers

She was Queen of the Island

            Queen of Hearts and
            Heaven

Long before he flew

above and learned

a thing or two from her

of love