About Linda Drattell
Biography
Linda Drattell is an award-winning poet and writer who lives in Northern California and Barcelona. She has also lived and worked in three world capitals on three continents and draws from her lifetime of experiences to inform her writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MBA from the American University in Washington, D.C. Deafened in her thirties, she relearned how to navigate social, professional, and family relationships, and has chronicled this process through articles in newsletters, magazines, and in two poetry collections. She has worked in peer support services, community relations, and as an advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Her poetry collections, Remember This Day (winner of the Bronze award from the 2023 Reader Views Choice Awards) and The Lighter Side of Horse Manure, are published by Finishing Line Press. Who Wants to be Friends with a Dragon? (winner of the Distinguished Favorite award from the 2023 Independent Press Awards), a children’s picture book she co-wrote, was published by Dorrance Publishing Company. An excerpt from her upcoming adult novel, The Peccadilloes of Filamena Phipps, was published in the nineteenth issue of Embark Literary Magazine. Her poem, “Torus,” was awarded second place in the Rhyming Poetry category for the 93rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition
While working on her full-length work of fiction, Linda looked for a way to fill her time and began writing poetry; childhood memories of her parents joyfully reciting poems reignited her love of the art form. Her poems have been published in online magazines and in print with various anthologies and literary magazines, including Prompt for the Press, Bubble Literary Magazine, Viewless Wings Publisher, Wingless Dreamer, Las Positas College’s Havik anthologies, three California Writers Club anthologies, Bad Dreams Good Dreams and Mark Drolsbaugh’s On the Fence: The Hidden World of the Hard of Hearing.
Linda’s aging horse and goats provided muses for many of her poems. She is also a long-distance runner and writes poems of her experiences passing through local parks. Writing also has helped her deal with the trauma of becoming deaf in her thirties. She writes of aging gracefully and with dignity and maintaining one’s sense of humor. Caught in the middle of a terror attack along with her husband in 2016 in Nice, France, writing played an important role in helping her process that event’s impact on her life.
Linda serves as a board member of both the California Communication Access Foundation/Ability Central Philanthropy and the California Writers Club/Tri-Valley Writers Branch. Please connect with her on X (formerly known as Twitter) and LinkedIn: @LindaDrattell, through her Facebook page: AuthorLindaDrattell, or through her YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@lindadrattell.
