Medley, Linda

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Medley, Linda

PERSONAL:

Education: Academy of Art College, San Francisco, CA, B.F.A., 1986.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Studiolio, P.O. Box 1545, Portland, OR 97207-1545. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Artist and writer. Cost Plus Imports Inc., San Francisco, CA, in-house designer, 1985-86; freelance illustrator, comic artist, and writer, 1986—; Stage One Productions, San Rafael, CA, assistant art director/sculptor, 1989.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Merit Scholarship, Academy of Art College, San Francisco, CA, 1982; Best Illustration, Best Children's Book Illustration, and Judge Paul Kratter Award, all Academy of Art College Award of Excellence, 1985; Xeric Foundation grant award, 1996, for self-publishing; twoWill Eisner Comics Industry Awards, 1998, for best new series and for talent most deserving of wider recognition.

WRITINGS:

(And illustrator) Castle Waiting: The Curse of Brambly Hedge (cartoon book; ongoing series), Olio (Petaluma, CA), 1996.

(And illustrator and publisher) Castle Waiting (cartoon book series), Olio (Petaluma, CA), 2000.

(And illustrator) Castle Waiting (graphic novel; collection edition of series; see above), introduction by Jane Yolen, Fantagraphics (Seattle, WA), 2006.

Also author and illustrator of the cartoon books The Lucky Road, Sweet Temptations,Bone Pin-Up, Dignifying Science, Hook, Line, and Sinker, and "Coloring Book" Pages; writer, penciler, inker, letterer, and colorist for the comics, including The Comics Journal Winter Special _1 collection edition, Fantagraphics Books (Seattle, WA), and of the Scatterbrain and Autobiographix anthologies, Dark Horse Comics, (Portland, OR).

ILLUSTRATOR:

Rudyard Kipling's The Elephant's Child, Platt & Munk (New York, NY), 1988.

Walter Retan, Favorite Tales from Many Lands, Grosset & Dunlap (New York, NY), 1988.

Andrew Helfer, Scared Stiff and other Creepy Tales, Western (Racine, WI), 1991.

Marshall Efron and Alfa-Betty Olsen, Really Scared Stiff: Three Creepy Tales, Western (Racine, WI), 1992.

Also illustrator of trade books, textbooks, workbooks, and other publications, including Appearances and Fairy Tales, both Houghton Mifflin (San Francisco, CA). Illustrator for Dragon magazine, Dungeon Adventures magazine, and Living Greyhawk Journal, TSR/Wizards of the Coast (Renton, WA). Illustrator for numerous periodicals, including Jack & Jill and Turtle magazines. Penciler, inker, letterer, and digital painter for Dignifying Science and Suspended Language, GT Labs, Ann Arbor, MI. Also illustrator of trading cards, including Star Wars Galaxy trading cards, Topps (New York, NY), 1995; Wildstorm trading cards, Image Comics (Anaheim, CA).

SIDELIGHTS:

Linda Medley is an illustrator and author of the "Castle Waiting" comic series, in which Medley features a "quiet blend of fantasy, folktales, and character-driven storytelling," as noted by Matthew L. Moffett in the School Library Journal. Although written as a series, Castle Waiting was also published as a single book by Fantagraphics and features a Sleeping Beauty-related story that includes plenty of tales by Medley, such as one about bearded nuns. Writing in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Charles de Lint pointed out that the collection is really "all one story—a real novel, though it's told in graphic form and first appeared as a serial comic." The reviewer went on to note: "Medley's dialogue is wonderful, and the anachronisms she throws in add to the flavor, rather than jar." According to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, the author "takes off into the thickets of her own mythology and shows less interest in princes arriving to sweep the girl off to happiness." Tina Coleman, writing in Booklist, noted: "The story feels both traditional and fresh, and Medley's art is clean and crisp." A reviewer writing in Publishers Weekly referred to the collection Castle Waiting as a "one-of-a-kind graphic novel … likely to appeal most to smart women in their twenties and older."