Lynne Hugo is the author of two collections of poetry, THE TIME CHANGE (Ampersand Press, 1992) and A PROGRESS OF MIRACLES (San Diego Poets Press, 1993).  An NEA Fellowship recipient, she has also received repeat individual artist grants in poetry and prose from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. 

Ms. Hugo’s first novel SWIMMING LESSONS, co-authored by Anna Tuttle Villegas, was published in 1998, by William Morrow and Co., Inc.   First serial rights were sold to Good Housekeeping, and the novel was a Featured Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club for November, 1998.  SWIMMING LESSONS has been translated into German, Spanish, Hebrew, French, Dutch and Japanese, Polish, and Czech.  Hearst Entertainment optioned the dramatic rights, and Another Woman’s Husband was made from the novel, airing as the Lifetime Original Movie of the Month for March, 2000. 

            BABY’S BREATH, a second collaborative novel with Ms. Villegas, published in the fall of 2000.  Un Lien Si Fragile, a translation of BABY’S BREATH was published in 2002 by Flammarion Ltd. in Canada.  France Loisirs published the title in 2003, and a book club edition was published in 2004 by J’ai Lu, also in France.

            Ms. Hugo has taught creative writing to hundreds of schoolchildren through the Ohio Arts Council's renowned Arts In Education program.  A children’s title, JESSICA'S TWO FAMILIES, was published by New Horizons Press in 2005. 

            WHERE THE TRAIL GROWS FAINT:   A Year In The Life Of A Therapy Dog Team, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize in 2004, was published by The University of Nebraska Press in May, 2005.  A memoir, the book is about Ms. Hugo’s work in a nursing home with her Labrador retriever, Hannah.

            NEXT books, an imprint of Harlequin, published THE UNSPOKEN YEARS as a May, 2006 title.  The same publisher featured GRACELAND in October.  Both novels are literary fiction.

            Ms. Hugo holds a Bachelor's degree from Connecticut College, and a Master’s from Miami University.  An Ohio licensed clinical psychotherapist, she is married to Dr. Alan deCourcy, a college chief academic officer, with whom she has a son and a daughter.

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"I write in black Walmart 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."