Linda is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and actor. She writes scripts that dive deep into the complexities of familial love, romantic love, and look unflinchingly at female sexuality and identity.
She tells stories about women pushing up against societal and personal barriers, women who feel it is psychologically and emotionally dangerous to be themselves out in the world, but are determined to put down roots of their own and find a clear open road to travel.
Her voice emerges primarily from the girl she was who had to hide her true self in order to survive. That girl now comingles with the woman she has become: a woman who is wrestling with middle-age, is the mother of two daughters, and one half of a long marriage that she feels has both thwarted and saved her.
As an actor she excels at dramatic roles with dark humor and emotional potency. She has a quiet, riveting stillness in her work embodying both immense vulnerability and potential explosiveness.
Writing Awards:
2026 Official Selection YoFiFest
2026 Official Selection NYWIFT iwomanTV Festival
2026 Official Selection Atlanta Women's Film Festival
2026 Official Selection Ashland Independent Film Festival
2026 Official Selection Long Island Film Expo
2023 Official Selection Women's Independent Film and Television Festival
2023 Official Selection Atlanta Women's Film Festival
2021 Quarter-Finalist - Atlanta Film Festival
2021 Winner Best Feature Screenplay - City of Angels Women's Film Fest.
2021 Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Grantee
2020 ARTemis Arts Wisdom Anthology Finalist
2020 Semi-Finalist - Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship
2019 Finalist - Kentucky Women Writers Prize
2019 Preliminary Finalist - Creative World Awards
2019 Finalist - Best Dark Comedy - Los Angeles Int'l Indie Short Fest
2017 Finalist - New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest, NYC
2016 Second Round of Competition for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab
2013 Grand Prize StoryPros Awards Screenplay Contest
2013 Quarter-Finalist PAGE International Screenwriting Awards
2013 Finalist - Filmmakers International Screenwriting Award
2011 BRIO Award for Screenplay (Bronx Council on the Arts)
2007 Semi-Finalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference
1997 Ledig House International Writers' Colony Fellowship
Third Prize, Center Theatre International Playwrighting Contest, Chicago, IL
Third Prize, Great Platte River Playwrights' Festival, Univ. of Nebraska
Finalist, Robert J. Pickering Award for Playwriting Excellence, Coldwater, MI
Finalist, South Carolina Playwrights' Festival, Trustus Theatre, Columbia, SC
Jane Chambers Playwriting Graduate Student Award
Linda most recently wrote, directed, and starred in a short film, Deborah at Work, shot in New York City.
Linda's solo show Perfect Love, directed by Gretchen Cryer, debuted at the United Solo Festival in NYC in 2018, was presented by Dixon Place and the Poor Mouth Theatre Company in 2019, and ran at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 2022.
Her play Bite the Apple was produced in 2022 in New York City with the help of a generous grant from Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation.
Her screenplay Charlotte won Best Feature Screenplay at the 2021 City of Angels Women's Film Festival.
Her screenplay Learning to Drive was the Grand Prize winner of 2013 StoryPros Awards Screenplay Contest.
Linda was a founding member of The Invisible Theatre in NYC where she wrote, acted and produced. Her play DO SOMETHING WITH YOURSELF! The Life of Charlotte Brontë was produced by The Invisible Theatre and published by Smith and Kraus.
Linda has acted in network television, numerous independent films (her imdb page) and theater productions in New York and regionally. She has a Masters Degree from Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Bachelors from the University of Colorado.
Contact Linda at LindaSManning at gmail.com