Anna Marie Linvill

Anna Marie Linvill is an author from Hillsborough, North Carolina. A dilettante who loves languages, opera, gardening, beekeeping, and poultry, she is a former U.S. Air Force Arabic Cryptologic Linguist and a career trailing military and diplomatic spouse who, after more than two decades of wandering the globe, is very much enjoying putting down roots in North Carolina where her people came from long ago (some willingly, some not so much). Anna has studied Arabic off and on for twenty years (on again now) and has managed to pick up a smattering of European languages as well, mostly from opera lyrics. She admits that her entire political worldview is derived from Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics (make of that what you will). Given the choice, Anna would probably choose to be a pirate king over playing the sanctimonious part with a pirate head and a pirate heart and loves a good paradox (she thinks about them a lot). When she is not busy tending chickens or memorizing silly arias, Anna works as coordinator for Duke University’s Rethinking Diplomacy Program at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Her memoir, Broadway in Benghazi: Comedy, Tragedy, and Diplomatic Drama in Gaddafi’s Libya was published in January 2024. It is available at your local independent bookstore by special order, Amazon.com, and wherever fine books are sold. She is grateful for the opportunity to write for South Writ Large.