His great-grandfather was Romulus Zachariah Linney, a prominent North Carolinian who served the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War and was a U.S.
[1] Linney recalled that his mother "was a very good amateur actress" and when she starred in the Nashville Community Theatre's 1940 production of Our Town as Mrs. Gibbs, he was deeply moved by her performance, particularly by her character's death.
He authored three novels, four opera librettos, twenty short stories, and 85 plays which have been staged throughout the United States from South Coast Repertory in California to the Virginia Museum Theater (VMT) in Richmond, and in Europe and Asia.
His plays include The Sorrows of Frederick, Holy Ghosts, Childe Byron, Heathen Valley, and an adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines's novel, A Lesson Before Dying, which has been produced in New York and in numerous regional theaters.
Many of his plays were set in Appalachia (Tennessee, Holy Ghosts, Sand Mountain, Gint and Heathen Valley), while others focused on historical subjects (The Sorrows of Frederick, King Philip, 2: Goering at Nuremberg).
[8] His adaptations for the American stage of several modern foreign classics—plays and tales from Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ibsen and others—have been performed from New York to Minneapolis, and his melding of two novels by Henry Adams into the comedy Democracy was premiered by artistic director Keith Fowler at VMT.
[2][15] At the time of death, he was married to Laura Callanan, former senior deputy chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and founding partner of Upstart Co-Lab.