Pen Name:
None
Genre:
Creative Nonfiction, Humor, Love Stories, Memoir
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Bio
Lynne Sebastian is a retired archaeologist with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She carried out research and excavation projects throughout the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, specializing in the archaeology of the Ancestral Pueblo people. Later in her career, she shifted her focus from archaeological research to preservation of the archaeological sites that contain an irreplaceable record of life in the past, serving first as the New Mexico State Archaeologist and later as the State Historic Preservation Officer.
Ultimately, she became a consultant, working nationwide on difficult issues of historic preservation and the management of historic and prehistoric places, and in 2013 she was appointed by President Obama to serve as an expert member of the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. From 2003 to 2005, she was the president of the Society for American Archaeology, and from 2012 to 2014, she served as president of The Register of Professional Archaeologists.
After a long career of publishing books, research papers, and journal articles on archaeology and historic preservation, in retirement she has discovered the joy of creative writing. Describing herself as a storyteller rather than a writer, she has published her first novel, One Last Cowboy Song, and an award-winning short story in Ramblings & Reflections, the SouthWest Writers 2021 contest winners volume. She is currently completing a memoir volume about a very special archaeological project in which she and her husband participated in 1981.
Books
Title: One Last Cowboy Song
Published: RMK Publications 2023
Genre: Western Fiction
English professor Amanda Payne and rancher Virgil Ames were unlikely ever to meet and even less likely to fall in love, but they do both. For a time, they share a life of tenderness, laughter, and passion. Both Virgil and Amanda carry scars from long-ago tragedies, however, and after a sudden change in Virgil’s life, the legacy of those tragedies drives them apart. Their story of love and joy, loss and reconciliation plays out against the magnificent backdrop of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, the sweet harmonies of country and western music, and the kindness of true friends.
Available for Sale
Anthology: Ramblings & Reflections:
Winning Words of SouthWest Writers 2021 Contest
Publisher: SouthWest Writers (2021)
“The Dude Abides” (p. 223) ♦ 2nd Place, Animals
Sometimes a name is a story all by itself. That was certainly true of a small, curly-haired, floppy-eared, seagoing dog that I once knew. This story of a remarkable canine adventure won second place in the Animals category of the 2021 SouthWest Writers writing contest.
Inside Ramblings & Reflections you’ll encounter aliens, foreign lands, post-apocalyptic environments, supernatural beings, paeans to nature, tributes to the lost, calls to action, wry humor, mysteries to ponder and histories to marvel at. The authors of this volume ably demonstrate the largesse of storytelling’s landscape, exploring the gamut of literature’s functions. They emote, exhort, evoke, inform, implore, explore, explain, entertain and exorcise. They have engaged in all the best pursuits, which—in the end—are really just one: to look within in order to see more fully without. We hope you, too, will be transported and transformed on the journeys they curate.
