writer, linguist, teacher

Lynda Boudreault, Ph.D. is a writer, linguist, and teacher. Her first love is languages, and this passion is what drove her to pursue a Ph.D. in linguistics. It's also inextricably entwined with her affinity for writing and teaching.As a writer, Lynda's experience spans an array of fields, from print news media to not-for-profit grant writing, fiction and non-fiction. And she continues to write anything that strikes her fancy, as Lynda and under other names, depending on her projects and genres.As a teacher, she is always eager to encourage intellectual curiosity and critical thinking everywhere she goes. She has worked with children and adults on three continents. With a passion for languages, it's not surprizing that her experience includes teaching English, Spanish, an endangered language spoken in Peru, and writing and composition. In her travels, it's not unusual to find her proofreading a new friend's English homework in cafes or allowing herself to be interviewed by students practicing English. Students always seem to find her. Lynda has also taught yoga, which has informed her broader teaching practices, and she's taught the magic of science and math through gardening skills and beekeeping to elementary school children in Austin, Texas.As a linguist, her primary research interest is language documentation, which has taken her to the Northern Peruvian Amazon to work with the speakers of the severely endangered language Iquito (Zaparoan). Her doctoral work took her to the mountainous coast of the Gulf of Mexico to work with N+ntaj+y (Mixe-Zoquean) and the highlands of Chiapas to work with other Zoquean languages. She is fascinated by the structures of grammar, meaning, discourse, and narrative from a cross-linguistic perspective.These days, Lynda continues to apply her broad yet interrelated skills in community endeavors, writing projects, independent research, and in her teaching. She is a substitute teacher with the Austin Independent School District.