We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Linda Donlin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Linda below.

Linda, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Thank you for the opportunity to share one of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on in my life. As background, I’ve always been a writer and had a rewarding career in Public Relations. After retiring, I launched a second career as an artist. I also have nine grandchildren, and my husband and I enjoy creating memories with them. This project grew out of my love for all of these things: family, writing and art.

In August 2020, I took our granddaughter Ava, age 8, to Medora, the #1 tourist attraction in my home state of North Dakota. It is a former cowboy town with a rich history, most notably being the place where Theodore Roosevelt owned two ranches and sought solace after the death of his wife. Roosevelt once said he would not have been President if it hadn’t been for the time he spent in North Dakota. Now this little town has been chosen to be the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s Presidential Library, opening in 2026. It’s a very exciting development for our state!

Medora sits at the entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the beautiful Badlands. Its attractions draw thousands each year and include the Medora Musical, set in an outdoor amphitheater and billed as The Greatest Show in the West; Pitchfork Fondue; Gospel Brunch; and Cowboy Hall of Fame, just to name a few. In addition to Theodore Roosevelt, its history includes an entrepreneurial French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores, who named the town after his wife Medora; a cattle boom ended by drought and blizzards, near destruction of the town, and then its resurrection and transformation by Harold Schafer, a successful North Dakota businessman and philanthropist.

Ava enjoyed our trip to Medora, one of my favorite places, but she was confused. She had many questions about the historical figures and how Medora came to be, so we went on a quest to find a book that would answer her questions. Even though Medora bills itself as “the Little Town with a Big Story,” we couldn’t find a book that clearly told the story of Medora’s past, present and future. So we decided to write one and include the whole family in the project!

Linda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was born and raised on a farm in North Dakota and educated in organizational communications. I hold business, public relations, management and human resources degrees. I led communications departments in large energy, healthcare and higher education organizations. I dove into everything I sought to accomplish by approaching it with a can-do attitude, my creativity and intellect and my “farm kid” work ethic. During the day, I expressed my creativity as a writer and editor of business communications and marketing campaigns, winning awards for my work and working my way up through the ranks. At night, I pursued my passion as a visual artist and a performing artist.

My husband and I have a blended family of five children, and we worked hard as parents and stepparents to create a cohesive family unit. Now we have nine grandchildren, and are committed to ensuring that they all feel like part of one big happy family. One of the ways we do this is by creating what we call “Adventures with Grandparents,” where each grandchild spends time with us as well as enjoying time with their cousins on various excursions.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I view writing my book “The Magic of Medora” as my legacy project in a variety of ways. As a professional, I mentored and coached many people along the way — especially women — encouraging them to believe in themselves and their abilities, to try new things and take risks and to have confidence that each new step taken into the unknown is a step in the right direction. As a community member and citizen of our state, I feel it’s important to do our part to preserve history and to promote our region and what it offers to all who will listen.

As a mother and stepmother, I believe I have always been our children’s enthusiastic cheerleader, their shoulder to cry on, trusted career advisor and steadfast supporter of following their dreams. Now by writing this book with the involvement of our grandchildren, it is my hope that this will be a memory of creating something meaningful that they will treasure all of their lives and will pass down to their children and grandchildren.

From a business standpoint, my legacy project involves finding an unfilled need and pursuing ways to fill it, using the connections and expertise that I had acquired during my career as a writer and public relations leader, as an artist, and as a business owner. From a personal standpoint, my legacy project involves having the courage to try something I had never done before and the confidence that I would see it through to completion. I hope that my legacy will be that as Theodore Roosevelt said, we can “dare greatly” at any stage of our lives and follow our dreams.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The journey to see “The Magic of Medora” through to completion contains many stories of resilience and determination. First, when I came up with the idea for the book, I did not want to create it in a vacuum. I was determined to seek the endorsement of the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, which is the organization that now oversees Medora’s operations. Because of the pandemic and many other reasons, it took time to connect, but once the connection was made and the concept gelled, the Foundation not only endorsed the book, but also agreed to support its publication and marketing costs.

Second, because I was an experienced writer, I was not the least bit concerned about writing the manuscript for the book. After a year of research that included trips to Medora with our grandchildren, conducting interviews, reading books, and combing through tons of historical documents, I wrote the manuscript in a couple weeks. I sent it out to some of my former PR colleagues to read and also got approvals fairly quickly from local historians and Medora experts. But as the manuscript came together, my vision for the visual presentation of the book became more clear. I had already painted some scenes from Medora and the Badlands, and I had first thought I would just use those to illustrate the book. But as I completed the manuscript and roughed out the layout, I decided it needed many more illustrations — 45 to be exact!!

I knew it would take me forever to paint them in the medium I was familiar with using. So, even though I was an artist, I looked into hiring an illustrator to create the illustrations. I actually did hire an illustrator to do one of them, so I could get a feel for how it might work. I sent her the reference material and a detailed description of what I was looking for, and although she did a very nice job, I realized there would be many adjustments that would need to be made, which would also be time-consuming. So I decided to illustrate the book myself, even though it meant learning a new medium. It took me four months, but I got them all done — ahead of schedule. And I’m proud to say “Written AND illustrated by Linda Donlin.”

When I began thinking about my “next act,” writing and illustrating a book like this wasn’t even on the list. But when this idea came up, I listened to the voices that told me to not be afraid to try something different — to use the skills I had acquired to forge a new creative path. I hope that my story inspires someone to follow their dreams, while being open to the unexpected, as that is sometimes where the biggest rewards are found.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lindadonlinfineart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindadonlin/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lindadonlinartist
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-donlin-4696703/