Linda Hunt

Linda Lawrence Hunt, Ph.D. is a freelance writer, and co-founder of the Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship, and former Whitworth University professor where she directed their distinctive Writing Program. After their 25-year-old married daughter died while volunteering in Bolivia when a bus plunged over a mountain cliff, Linda and her husband Jim began the foundation in her honor. As it grew, she left her teaching career to direct the foundation that provides a mentoring community and support for other young adults in their twenties engaged in a year or more of service in America's urban centers, in developing nations, or with environmental projects. She has traveled throughout America and in Germany and Norway as a keynote speaker after her best-selling book Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk across Victorian America was published. Reconstruc ting this true story of a mother and daughter walking unescorted across America on a $10,000 wager to save a family farm involved over 15 years of research. Eventually she wrote her doctoral dissertation on Helga's story, with particular fascination with what silences family stories since this was "lost" for over 100 years. Linda and her husband Jim, also an author and historian, live in a hillside home in Spokane, Washington where she finds nurture and healing through her passion for gardening and friendships.

Articles:

Can Grief Be a Friend?

Anne LaMott, in her book Traveling Mercies, writes,  “Don’t get me wrong. Grief sucks; it really does. Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of Life, of the now, of the sense of living spirit…The bad news is that whatever you use to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you.” Could one of these gold nuggets be that grief can actually be a friend? In no way did grief feel friendly in the early devastating weeks after our 25-year-old married daughter Krista was killed while volunteering in Bolivia. […]

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In Praise of Friendship: Maya Angelou and Mrs. Flowers

Sometimes gifted writers, like Maya Angelou, feel like a friend because they invite you into their heart and mind with such a generosity of spirit. It’s no wonder that millions around the world are grieving her death. Though we didn’t ‘know’ her, we came into her world through the 31 books, essays, plays and poetry that she so eloquently wrote. I loved introducing her writings with college students. In the cacophony of voices of praise for Angelou’s evocative writings and dramatic readings, I can imagine she might shout out, “WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! Please remember that a few very important people came […]

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