Linda Strange
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Merit Pay, Anyone?

Merit Pay, Anyone?

March 3, 2018 · by Linda Strange · in USA

I wasn’t going to weigh in on this because, well, everyone else has, and what am I going to say…

Gina

Gina

December 30, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Italy, USA

Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austro-Hungarian writer who was born, wrote, and died a long time ago. He was most…

The End of the World

The End of the World

September 26, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Caribbean, England, Mexico, USA

In the nearly twenty years I’ve been teaching in the US public schools, I’ve had quite a few kids walk…

What They Remember

What They Remember

August 19, 2017 · by Linda Strange · in Cape Verde, Trinidad, USA

It’s been the summer of meeting up with former students, students I haven’t seen in more than a decade, a…

Living in America

Living in America

December 14, 2015 · by Linda Strange · in USA

There are many things I could write about as the dark and confusing year of 2015 draws to its close,…

Forty Days in the Wilderness

Forty Days in the Wilderness

June 4, 2015 · by Linda Strange · in USA

And so…as the school year draws to its close and the frenzy of testing slows, (but does not yet completely…

Testing Testing One-Two-Three

Testing Testing One-Two-Three

February 13, 2015 · by Linda Strange · in USA

On page 58 of the January 26th issue of The New Yorker, there is a cartoon showing a numb-looking teacher…

They Flew Through The Air

They Flew Through The Air

June 13, 2014 · by Linda Strange · in USA

One of the things the new Common Core emphasizes is the ability to distinguish between serious and not-so-serious sources of…

No Pain No Gain

No Pain No Gain

September 26, 2013 · by Linda Strange · in Finland, Poland, South Korea, USA

I was watching PBS news the other night and saw an interview with Amanda Ripley, the author of the new…

Living in America

Living in America

December 15, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

There have been days since my father and mother passed away three-and-a-half years and a year ago respectively when the…

Boat People

Boat People

November 22, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

So, Thanksgiving is once more upon us, the season in which where I work, little lines of boys and girls…

School Days

School Days

October 17, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Uncategorized

So the Taliban are now shooting girls who want to go to school, are they? Not that this is really…

First Aid

First Aid

October 3, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in Russia, USA

On September 18th, the US government announced that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), after two decades of…

September 11th

September 11th

September 19, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in USA

And so another anniversary of the September 11th bombing of the World Trade Center has come and gone replete with…

The Pip Squeak Sikh

The Pip Squeak Sikh

August 15, 2012 · by Linda Strange · in USA

Several years ago, on the first day of school, a young child was delivered by their mother to the class…

Author

Portrait photo of Linda Strange

All countries are strange, none stranger than your own.

January 2023
I am delighted to announce that Glass Mountain Literary Magazine has published my short story Retention in their current issue. You can read the story here.
September 2022
Watch a video of me reading a live version of a blog about the Berlin Wall, The Wall I Knew.
July 2022
Watch a video of me reading a live version of my blog, The Last of the Best.
May 2022
I’m excited to announce three pieces of my writing have recently been published. What Ever Happened to Igor, an essay in Pangyrus, is about a study trip I took to Ukraine in 1985 with a group of Finns and Swedes. Igor was a young Ukrainian-Swedish man from Stockholm who was going to meet his father in Kyiv, a father he hadn’t seen in twenty years. Want to watch a video of me reading the essay? Click here. Will They Make it Home Again?, another essay in Pangyrus, explores the relationship between the images of World War Two childhood evacuations recorded in select works of European literature and the images of evacuation we now see on our television screens from Ukraine. Click here to watch the video.
Finally, The Longest Day, is a short story published in the 2022 Freshwater Literary Journal. It details the experience of a young non-English speaking Cape Verdean girl, Gee, on her first day in an American inner-city school. It is an account of Gee’s first encounter with her new ESL teacher and the safe space this teacher creates for Gee to express her true emotions. Watch a You Tube video of me speaking with Georbina DaRosa, the real-life inspiration for my story.

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