For the past thirty-five years Lindy Gifford has worked in publishing and graphic design. She has always loved books and decided early on to make book cover and page design her specialty, working primarily for traditional book publishers and for a “pay-to-publish” company. She also has first hand experience of the publishing industry from an author’s perspective, having published two books, one with a traditional publisher and one independently published. In 2015, she was ordained an interfaith chaplain by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, graduating from their two year residency program. It was there that she learned the intentional listening skills of a chaplain, and for the past six years she has been combining creative coaching and publishing consulting with her work as a book designer. In 2019, she gave her consulting practice a name and created Manifest Identity.
More about Lindy
Lindy Gifford graduated from Tufts University in 1978, majoring in archeology and anthropology, and worked as a photographer on archeological expeditions in Sardinia, Montana, Peru, Belize, and Boston, before choosing marriage and a more settled lifestyle. After taking courses in graphic design at Massachusetts College of Art, Lindy started work at a design studio in downtown Boston in 1986. While living in Wareham, Massachusetts, she and her husband, Stephen Cole, received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study cranberry growing on Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts and co-authored The Cranberry: Hard Work and Holiday Sauce (2009, Tilbury House, publisher).
In 1987 Steve and Lindy moved to Belfast, Maine, where she worked as art director for several magazines, including National Fisherman, Maine Boats & Harbors, and WoodenBoat magazines. After the birth of their second daughter, she became a free-lance graphic designer, specializing in book design. In 1999 Lindy and her family moved to Damariscotta, Maine, where they have lived ever since. Lindy continued working for various book publishers, including WoodenBoat Books, Down East Books, Church Publishing, and Rowman & Littlefield, and also worked part-time for a local pay-to-publish company.
Lindy is the author of Doodle-ography Journal: doodle-ography.com. She pioneered doodling as a spiritual practice and discovered its surprising benefits using the journal in workshops with diverse populations, including elders, women veterans, and incarcerated women. She published the first edition with Maine Authors Publishing in 2014 and the second edition independently in 2018 and it continues to sell well.
In 2015 Lindy attended a two-year, in-person chaplaincy program and was ordained an interfaith chaplain by ChIME, the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. As a community chaplain, she has worked mostly with non-profits, such as The Restorative Justice Project of the Midcoast, Maine Unitarian Universalist State Advocacy Network, and Maine-Wabanaki REACH. She is a founding member of People United Against Racism, a local, grassroots, interfaith effort to confront white privilege and systemic racism.
Starting in 2018, Lindy was the editor of the Abbey of Hope’s blog, Reflectionary. Besides editing and selecting art for Reflectionary, she was a regular contributor, as were some of her clients. Reflectionary moved to the Chime website after the dissolution of the Abbey of Hope in July 2022. Lindy is no longer the editor, but continues to contribute posts and art. To read older posts by her or her clients, and to see her work as editor, you can go to Reflectionary archives. (To read current Reflectionaries.)