About

Life in brief

I write - have always written - and I run Linen Press, a small indie publishing house for women writers: www.linen-press.com.  Writing and editing can be a fine balancing act but ever since I saw Elvira Madigan, I've secretly wanted to be a tight rope walker.

My sixteen books are published by HarperCollins, Oliver & Boyd, Pluto Press and The Women's Press. They include Write From the Start, a six-book, illustrated writing scheme for schools, and Shattered, a non-fiction book based on interviews with thirty people with severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. My two sons and I were badly affected and lived ( a kind of life) in the ME Ghetto for too many years. 

Two books are close to my heart. The first is my debut novel, White Lies, runner-up for the Robert Louis Stevenson Award, about an adulterous affair between a young soldier's wife and an intelligence officer who understands Africa, played out against the bloody backdrop of the 1950s Mao Mao uprising in Kenya. Epic and intimate, the novel spans four generations.

"A debut novel which possesses and is possessed by a rare authority of voice... the mother's voice that sings White Lies into unforgettability. Hers and Eve's. Their thoughts and writing ring like music."
- The Scotsman

The second is The Red Beach Hut which tells the story of a fine but fated friendship between a man and a boy, both outsiders, who meet on a windswept English beach. Innocence and compassion are twisted by the tainted gaze of society's prejudices.

'With poetic, melodious prose, and with rhythms that illustrate Lynn Michell's assurance as a writer, the narrative moves back and forth between characters, as well as across the ebbs and flows of time and timelessness.'
- Joyce Goodman, author and Professor of History of Education

New projects

The Water All Around Us

My fourth novel, The Water All Around Us, is finished after several spells in that place well known to writers, the drawer of despair. The story is about identity, loss and belonging and is about our search for a place that is home. Subtly it speaks of our threatened oceans and precious eco systems. The backcloth is a small Scottish island and the ocean that fringes it.  A young whale, a crofter's daughter and a marathon swimmer are adrift and displaced. When their paths converge, the tension is ratcheted up and lives are put in danger.

To be published by Linen Press, 2023.