Born Rosina Lippi on January 14, 1956 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Her father was an Italian emigrant, and she has ancestry of different Europeans countries.At seventeen she went to Austria on an American Field Service scholarship. Upon graduating from high school, she went to teacher's college in Vorarlberg, Austria. She holds a PhD in linguistics from Princeton University and taught linguistics for twelve years.
Married with Bill Green, they have a daughter, Elizabeth. The family lives on Puget Sound in Washington with two dogs and two cats. In her spare time, she is a fiber artist whose work has been published in Quilting Arts Magazine. An interview with Linda Richards for January Magazine was published in March 2000.