Set partially in eastern North Carolina, Linda Beatrice Brown's first novel, Rainbow Roun Mah Shoulder, won The North Carolina Cultural Arts Coalition's contest in 1983 for the best book by a minority writer and was published the next year by the Carolina Wren Press. Brown's second novel, Crossing Over Jordan, was published in 1995 by Ballentine Books. Brown's biographical work entitled The Long Walk: The Story of the Presidency of Willa B. Player at Bennett College, appeared in 1998. A native of Akron, Ohio, Brown was graduated from Bennett College in 1961 and earned a Ph.D. from Union Graduate School in 1980. She has been a college professor for more than 26 years, teaching at Guilford College and most recently serving as the Willa B. Player Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Bennett College.