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Biography of Linda M. HasselstromWhat's Here?
OK all you Hasselstrom Scholars and Book Club folks-- here's where you can learn enough about Linda to get a good start on that paper or discussion. How did Linda's childhood experiences influence her later writing? Was that one particular poem based on an actual event? And just what does Linda have planned for the future? Those of you with only a casual interest are welcome to scroll down really fast and just look at the pictures. Linda's Biography -- with photos! Additional Biographical Sources Suggested Reading and Other Articles For More . . . Be sure to visit the Ask Linda Page, where Linda answers questions about her life, her writing, and her ranch. If you can't find what you really want to know, post your own question on the Ask Linda Page or send us an e-mail using the link in the left-hand column of this website. back to top Biography of Linda M. Hasselstrom
I was born in Texas in 1943, near enough to a beach to have good memories of the ocean, moved to South Dakota in 1949, and have lived there, with absences for college and other experiences, since. My mother married John Hasselstrom when I was nine years old, and we moved to his ranch on the plains east of the Black Hills. I began writing the same year, as soon as I got my first horse-- there IS a connection between those two phrases. 
Linda on Blaze and her father on Zarro, 1953
"I always dreamed of horses, long before we moved to the ranch...When I finally climbed on dear old fat Blaze, bought with eighty dollars of my own money, I began to understand what I'd been longing for."-- from Windbreak Bio continues-- At nine years old, I had no idea of being a writer. But sometime that first summer I was riding horseback with my father on the plains and saw an animal I knew nothing about-- I think it was an antelope. I behaved like a writer without knowing it: at home that night, I wrote down what my father had told me about antelope, along with my own observations, so that I would remember the experience. Then I looked in my parents’ books for more information, and probably in the books at the small grade school in Hermosa. Without knowing it, I had begun to be an essayist: concentrating on detail, doing research to expand my knowledge, writing it all down as a way of possessing the experience. Since then, I’ve kept an almost-daily journal. When I began reading the work of Nebraska writer Mari Sandoz, it gradually dawned on me that people like me could write the books I read so eagerly. Like many writers, I published a few really terrible poems in high school, and a few more that were a little better as I worked for my college degree. Even though my mother hoped that I would marry a doctor or a lawyer so that I could be a homemaker and have babies, she encouraged me to get my own degree so I’d have "something to fall back on." From her own experience, she knew women couldn’t always rely on others to support them. I graduated from the University of South Dakota with degrees in English and Journalism. During college, I usually had writing jobs; I worked on the night staff of the Sioux City Journal while finishing my senior year and one year of graduate courses. With my first husband, I moved to Columbia, MO, where I taught Journalism at Christian (now Columbia) College, and received an M. A. in American Literature from the University of Missouri. I had chosen a direction that took me away from the ranch, to the University of Missouri, and I believed my departure was permanent. Now that I have committed myself to the ranch, I find that period of my life hard to understand, but I know that then I thought I was doing the right thing. I felt like a capable, modern career woman. The intellectual challenges were terrific: I was teaching journalism in a girls’ school, taking graduate courses for my MA and later my aborted Ph.D., trying to be a stepmother, exercising every practical skill I knew to support us on little money, attending poetry readings and writing poetry, meeting new people. 
Director of Student Publications
Linda taught at Christian (now Columbia) College,
Columbia, MO, from 1966-1969.
Bio continues-- When I returned to South Dakota in 1971, I continued to write, as well as founding Sunday Clothes: A Magazine of the Fine Arts, with the help of grants from several agencies, including the South Dakota Arts Council. I also began operating Lame Johnny Press, an independent publishing house which published 23 books by Great Plains writers-- but none I’d written. I derived great satisfaction and some financial support from the magazine and press, publishing the work of several hundred Great Plains writers and artists. I divorced my first husband in June 1973, just in time for my 30th birthday. So I was back on the ranch, living in an apartment my husband and I had built on the side of my parents house, 30 years old and according to statistics I recall from the time far more likely to be hit by a meteor than to marry again. I had an MA in American Literature, and taught one year at Black Hills State College (now University) in Spearfish, SD. But I'd gotten crosswise of the administration by encouraging my journalism students to evaluate their teachers. Evaluations were common at the University of Missouri/Columbia, where I'd been teaching, but were a new and terrifying thing in SD. I recall yelling, "I quit!" just before the school president yelled, "You're fired!" but neither of us were right: I was only filling in for another professor for a one-year sabbatical. 
Cora and Mildred, 1978
Linda's grandmother and mother
in their Sunday clothes.
Neither my mother nor her mother considered it proper for girls to work outside, either on the tractor or with cattle. A lady, they both declared, learned domestic skills to prepare for her traditional jobs of marriage and raising children. I found their unity puzzling since my Grandmother had worked outside-– in her garden and the chicken house-- all her life; she could chop a rattlesnake into fifteen pieces before you could holler, “Snake!”
Bio continues-- By 1984, Sunday Clothes magazine and Lame Johnny Press had survived several serious crises--financial and otherwise-- including an entire print run lost in the Rapid City flood of 1972, my divorce from my first husband, and building a house with my second husband, George. The magazine and press were successful in that writers and artists sent hundreds of submissions of work for both the magazine and press from all over the country. But the subscriptions didn’t support the magazine, and I had little time to do my own writing. During that year, in order to make money, I edited and published an anthology of South Dakota writers, with help from SDAC. I edited Journal of a Mountain Man: James Clyman for Mountain Press of Missoula, MT. My first book of poems, Caught By One Wing, was published by a San Francisco letterpress. At the end of that year, I received a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. This combination of events encouraged me to spend more time writing-- so I “suspended” operation of the press. I truly hoped to sell the press operation to someone, along with all that I had learned from it. I believed then, and believe now, that an astute person could make a living publishing the work of South Dakota and regional writers, both living and historical. But no one has done so. I learned so much about regional literature while operating the press that I miss no opportunity to encourage teachers and the public to explore regional writing and art, and to appreciate our native cultures. I think contemporary regional literature can be a powerful tool for teachers and citizens, encouraging our children to appreciate their region, to remain there, and to value the Great Plains for its uniqueness-- rather than turning it into an imitation metropolis. Another great reason for creation and support of a press of our own. My first book of poems, Caught By One Wing, had been published in a beautiful limited letterpress edition by Julie D. Holcomb in San Francisco in 1984. For years, I’d been writing and submitting fiction-- pretty closely based on my own reality in some cases-- to magazines outside the region. Not only was I rejected, but some of the rejections sneered at the ranching life I lived and chided me for writing fantasy. Yet no journalists were reporting the facts of our region except for those who occasionally dropped in, drew a few hasty conclusions, and zipped back to some metropolis. So I decided it was time to write nonfiction, and began working on the book that became Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains using the journals I have kept since I was nine years old. [To read a more complete story of the publication of WINDBREAK click here] Windbreak was rejected by 24 publishers before being published by a one-woman press in Berkeley, CA in early 1987. The book was reviewed so widely and well it’s still astonishing, with notices in The New York Times Review of Books and Ms. Magazine; it was accepted as the alternate selection by Doubleday Book Club. 
Linda fixing fence in 1974
Bio continues-- During the same year, a connected collection of my essays, Going Over East: Reflections of a Woman Rancher, won the first American Writing Award by Fulcrum, Inc., and was published in hardbound in September, 1987. Roadkill, poems primarily about my rural experiences, was published in 1987 by Spoon River Poetry Press (now called Plains Press), and sold so well that Spoon River reprinted my first book of poetry, Caught By One Wing in 1990. The ranch where I lived and worked cattle provided steady wages of $300 a month, but demanded year-round work, so I began doing fewer workshops and less teaching and cut back on active participation in environmental and social organizations in order to have more time to write. I believed I was more effective as an environmentalist by writing instead of lobbying, and the cost in fuel, and wear on my vehicles and myself, was considerably less. And always, I continued writing in my journals. Following the death of my second husband, George R. Snell, LIFE magazine published Jeff Jacobson’s photos accompanying my journal entries in a feature about my ranch work in July, 1989. I was named South Dakota's Author of the Year by the SD Hall of Fame in 1989. That same year I received the Governor's Award for Distinction in Creative Achievement, and used the award ceremony in the capitol rotunda as an opportunity to call upon the governor and other elected officials to preserve South Dakota's natural resources. In late 1991, Fulcrum published my second collection of essays on the environment, accompanied by poems. The book was titled Land Circle: Writings Collected From the Land. In 1993, Dakota Bones, a collection of poems including my first two books plus about thirty pages of new poems, appeared from Spoon River Poetry Press. Roadside History of South Dakota was published in 1994 by Mountain Press. [For an exclusive essay by Linda about writing Roadside History plus a list of corrections to the text, click here.] Encouraged by the acceptance of work I had feared might never be published, or find a wider readership, I began studying and writing about rural and ecological problems from my own experiences in the Great Plains. As my knowledge expanded, I encouraged ranchers and farmers to adopt better practices to help keep more rural people employed in agriculture. I wanted to help inform the American public about the ruinous costs to all of us of the kind of development we've seen in agriculture over the last fifty years. My work has been published in periodicals as diverse as Reader’s Digest, Bloomsbury Review, Orion, High Country News, Saturday Evening Post and Dry Crik Review. An excerpt from Land Circle appeared in the 2004 Chicken Soup for the Nature Lover’s Soul. Focusing on environmental problems allowed me to use my ranching background in educating others about important problems relating to land use. Unlike many so-called experts on land use, I have actually spent most of my life working outside in all weather, observing storms, animals, floods, fires, grass growing, trees burning: Nature’s Reality Show. I see the plains as the final frontier, in danger of utter destruction if it serves more populous areas only as an energy reservoir, a source of cheap labor, or as a place to dump waste from more populous areas. This writing, I believe, is closely connected to, and as worthy of attention as, writing generally considered more "artistic"-- fiction and poetry. I believe one's work should complement the rest of one's life, and blend smoothly into a whole that keeps the physical body healthy while also working the mind. I work to bring my life into a circle: writing things I can respect, publishing work I value, laboring at riding, branding, gardening, taking care of the land, and doing it all with an awareness of how those things fit together. More and more, as I grow older, I feel that it is important to keep my roots in this arid soil, to learn from it all I can, in order to continue to grow as a writer and as a human being. 
Linda and her father, John, in 1989
When I write, I recall my father’s wry comment when I came back from my freshman year in college filled with my own self-importance and brilliance: “Don’t forget how to talk to ordinary people.” I want to write so that if my neighbors read my work, they will understand what I am saying.
Bio continues-- In 1992, during my father’s illness, I relocated to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Feels Like Far, sixteen connected true stories about this time of my life-- losing and regaining the family ranch-- was published in hard cover by The Lyons Press in 1999, and in paper by Houghton Mifflin in 2001. High Plains Press published Bitter Creek Junction, poems, in 2000. I have also read the poems onto a cassette and CD, available from Windbreak House, so that you can hear my voice reading my words. Bitter Creek Junction won a Fine Arts Award from the Wyoming State Historical Society, was a Willa Award Finalist from Women Writing the West, and won the Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City is surely one of the leading repositories of Western lore and culture, and the Wrangler is a weighty sculpture of a cowBOY on a horse. I would not, of course, mock the Wrangler, though under certain circumstances-- which would not be while visiting The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City-- I might note that women have been cowGIRLS as long as men have been cowBOYS, and a statue of a female on a horse might be a nice way to recognize women who win the award. Still, the Wrangler Award helped my respectability among writers of cowboy poetry, and that has led to some of my most enjoyable encounters in writing, particularly going to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV. Between Grass and Sky: Where I Live and Work, published by the University of Nevada in 2002, focuses on Nature as “my boss, manager of the branch office-- or ranch office-- where I toil to convert native grass into meat.” I’d always encouraged women’s writing when I read my own work or presented workshops, but I began focusing more of my poetic attention-- more of my own writing-- on issues concerning women. About 1990, I started looking for women who wrote about land use issues in the West, and eventually joined with my co-editors Nancy Curtis and Gaydell Collier to produce the nonfiction western women's anthology Leaning into the Wind: Women Write From the Heart of the West in 1997. I also wrote the introduction to the book, which was published by Houghton Mifflin and reprinted three times in cloth before the paper edition appeared in May, 1998. To create Leaning, we sent invitations to six western states, to small-town newspapers, to agricultural weeklies, to extension agencies, libraries, arts councils, and teachers, asking women to write about their lives in the rural West. We deliberately avoided sending invitations to publications intended only for writers, so many of the women who contributed to that book had never written before. Our second anthology, Woven on the Wind: Women Write About Friendship in the Sagebrush West, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2001. Our third collection, Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West, 2004, features more than 150 Western women writing about their place in Western communities. I consider the work on these anthologies-- helping those women send their voices out-- to be among the most important accomplishments of my life. 
The publication celebration for the book Crazy Woman Creek was held at the Mari Sandoz Center in Chadron, Nebraska, May 2004
Linda poses with the sculpture of Mari Sandoz in front of the Sandoz Center, along with western women's anthology co-editors
Gaydell Collier (with her trusty dog, Maxie) and Nancy Curtis.
Bio continues-- In 1996, I began conducting writing workshops for women at my ranch home during the beautiful prairie spring, summer, and fall. Each retreat is individualized, with a maximum of four women attending. Women are welcome from anywhere, of course, but many say that reading my work has made them realize they want to write about their own lives, and about similar issues. It is rewarding to find them at Windbreak House, and see that they are encouraged by my example, and by my comments on their writing, to watch them finding their voices, beginning to speak the wisdom they have acquired in 20 or 30 or 40 years of living-- and without asking some authority figure if their work is acceptable by some spurious standard. Several women have written work at Windbreak House that has subsequently been published; in some cases it was their first publication, and while publication is not the most important standard by which I measure their success, it was satisfying to them, and that gives me great joy. In 2008, my spouse retired and we moved from Cheyenne back to my beloved house on the hill on the South Dakota ranch. Because Jerry and I live in Windbreak House full time I have shifted the writing retreats to the house my father built when I was nine years old, now called Homestead House. Though neighboring ranchers lease my ranch and I am no longer involved in the cattle operation on a daily basis, I am still deeply connected to the land and concerned for its future. In 2001, with the Great Plains Native Plant Society, I dedicated the Claude A. Barr Memorial Great Plains Garden. The garden will preserve the native plants on 350 acres of my ranch-- white penstemon, red globe mallow, lanceleaf bluebells, golden pincushion cactus and dozens of others. A vintage log cabin moved to the site as labeled pieces is being erected and will serve as the visitor center. Eventually, the group hopes to label native plants, install pathways, and open the site to the public. The venture is an experiment in preserving some of the ranch without willing it to descendants. I am also working with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory on a riparian habitat improvement project along Battle Creek. This pasture is the only section of my ranch land that has year-round flowing water on it. Barb-wire fences were put up to keep cattle away from the delicate creek banks and RMBO staff make annual monitoring trips to observe and photograph the habitat changes and conduct an annual bird count. [For information on the Great Plains Native Plant Society and the Claude A. Barr Memorial Great Plains Garden, click here.] [To read more about the birds and wildlife on Linda's ranch and to learn about the RMBO riparian habitat improvement project, click here.] Occasionally friends ask when I’m going to start ranching again. Sometimes I think I’d like that, but I believe it’s more important for me to continue writing and working with other writers. At Windbreak House, I can demonstrate the lessons of becoming a writer: the importance of making do, of practice, solitude, patience, and finishing what you start. And show how a sense of humor can help a writer survive. Rodney Nelson, writing in Dakota Arts Quarterly, once wrote about me, "She can deliver a calf and a poem on the same day-- after mending a fence." I like that statement, and believe something similar could be said of many farm and ranch women, who choose to be where we are because we love the wide land, the independence, even the occasional harshness of the prairies. back to top Additional Sources
Additional biographical information about Linda M. Hasselstrom can be found in the following sources: Contemporary Authors, Gale Research (835 Penobscot Building, 645 Griswold St., Detroit MI 48226-4094), Vol. 153, pp. 144-145, 1996. American Nature Writers, editor John Elder; written by Kathleen Danker, Vol. 1, "Edward Abbey to John McPhee," pp. 337-348; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997. Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume 1: The Authors, ed. Philip A. Greasley, Indiana University Press, 2001. Such News of the Land: U.S. Women Nature Writers, ed. Thomas S. Edwards and Elizabeth A. De Wolfe; University Press of New England (Hanover NH), 2001. back to top Suggested Reading The best way to really get the flavor of Linda's life-- the events and Linda's observations about those events-- is to read Linda's books about her life in publication order: Windbreak, Going Over East, Land Circle, Feels Like Far, and Between Grass and Sky. Although the stories are not necessarily chronological (childhood memories are scattered throughout the books and Linda often juxtaposes one event on top of an earlier happening), Linda did write and edit the books in this order. Reading the books by publication date will, perhaps, allow you to follow Linda's changing thoughts and views on her own life and the land around her. Some of Linda's poems, found in her books Dakota Bones and Bitter Creek Junction, are also autobiographical. Click here for a bibliography of poems and essays by Linda that have appeared in other publications. Click here for a list of articles written about Linda. back to top |
