Lynne Hugo

Lynne Hugo is an American author whose roots are in New England. A National Endowment For The Arts Fellowship recipient, she has also received repeat individual artist grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her publications include ten novels, as well as a memoir, Where the Trail Grows Faint, which won the Riverteeth Creative Nonfiction Book Prize. An eleventh novel, The Language of Kin, was published in July '23. She has also published two books of poetry and a children’s book. She lives with her husband, a photographer, in the Midwest. The couple have two children, three grandchildren, and an energetic beagle/Lab mix who excels at barking, retrieving tennis balls, and terrorizing squirrels. Forthcoming work includes A Matter of Mercy, 10th Anniversary Edition with a new Afterword (August 6, '25) and The Sparks From Silent Stars, which will be published April 22, 2025. Ms. Hugo has taught creative writing to hundreds of schoolchildren through the Ohio Arts Council’s renowned Arts in Education program. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College, and a Master’s from Miami University. When an editor asked her to describe herself as a writer, she responded: "I write in black Wal-Mart capri sweatpants. They don't start out as capris, but I routinely shrink them in the drier by accident. And I always buy black because it doesn't show where I've wiped the chocolate off my hands. Now that my son and daughter are grown, my previous high grade of 'below average' in Domestic Achievement has dropped somewhat. But I'm less guilty about it now. I lose myself in crafting language by a window with birdfeeders hanging in the branches of a Chinese elm towering over the house. When I come up for air, I hike by the ponds and along the river in a nearby forest with my beloved Lab. My husband, with whom I planted that elm as a bare root sapling, joins us when he can."