American journalist, public commentator, and former White House Press SecretaryBill Moyers says she writes "about women, children, animals — healing" that "deal with the domestic violence that marred her childhood in working-classLynn, Massachusetts and her subsequent feelings as a wife and mother." According to National Book Award winner Lisel Mueller: "Linda McCarriston accomplishes a near miracle, transforming memories of trauma into poems that are luminous and often sacramental, arriving at a hard-won peace." While she was writing for the Maine Sunday Telegram, in Spring 1979 issue of literary journal Ploughshares, printed her 5 poems named, "Moon in Aquarius", "Eve", "Desire", "The Cleaving" and "Intent" as her first poetry publication. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, New England Monthly, Harvard Review and "in a broad range of anthologies", she is interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air and featured in Bill Moyers' "The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets" at Public Broadcasting Service and book The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets, 1995. She interviewed for All Things Considered, National Public Radio, aired July 14, 2001, included in Linda Hogan's "Intimate Nature" and Robert McDowell's "Cowboy Poetry Matters" and in The New York Times Book Review. Her poem "Le Coursier de Jeanne d'Arc" was scored for sopranoJudith Coen by Bruno Rigacci and had its premiere at the Spoleto Arts Symposia in July 2000. Two of her poems were read by Garrison Keillor in "The Writer's Almanac", NPR, in the week of April 18, 2000. Invited to contribute 60-page autobiography to Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Gale Research, 1996 She was a speaker with the poet Richard Hoffman, Grace Paley, Marybeth Holleman and Elizabeth Wales, at the panel titled "Writing with Heart AND Intellect" during Annual AWP Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia on March 31, 2005.
1996, Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Creative Activity, UAA.
2004, Alaska Press Women's Communicator of Achievement award, as APW Treasurer, for her "career accomplishments, as well as her participation in APW." Jan Ingram, from the award committee stated, "Linda is a nationally acclaimed poet who fought her way through difficult personal issues and the social pressures of her generation to find her voice. For her students and for the rest of us, she models courage and honesty."
