Raised in Hereford, Texas, Linda West took a B.S. in nutrition at the University of Texas, and wrote the "Dining In" column for Texas Monthly, while raising a family in Houston. In the early 1980s she moved to Menlo Park, California, where she completed an M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, then to Ashland, Oregon, where she began writing on cooking, dining, and travel, and was a columnist for The Oregonian. In the late 1990s, she divorced and moved to Maplewood, New Jersey, where she has collaborated on several books with her daughter, Katherine West Defoyd. She is an independent consultant on food and travel.