Linda grew up in Kansas and enjoys reading and exercising, especially water aerobics and cycling. She has a Masters in Linguistics and taught ESL to Saudi students in Wisconsin and Los Angeles, and later taught at the University of Kuwait.
In 1984, she moved to Sana’a, Yemen to teach at the Yemen America Language Institute. Within days of arriving, she met Awad Abdelgadir at a mountain trail running club (Highest Hash House Harriers). They married in 1986 and in 1988 moved to Austin to go to graduate school; she got her PhD in Middle Eastern History. She and Awad returned to Yemen in 1992 on a Fulbright Grant for ethnographic historical research, leaving when civil war broke out in 1994. She taught at UT-Austin and Southwestern University and traveled to Yemen and Oman as much as possible on research grants and consulting jobs. She and Awad went annually to visit his village and family in Sudan. She is sad not to be able to return to Yemen or Sudan now because of civil wars in each country.
