Linda Sharar is an American folk singer/songwriter. She began singing, playing guitar, and writing songs as a teenager, inspired by James Taylor and Neil Young. While attending college at the University of Virginia and playing soccer for the school, she performed at open mikes in Charlottesville, Virginia. After graduation, she moved to New York City to begin her career as a singer-songwriter. Linda was active in the group of New York songwriters who gathered weekly at Jack Hardy's Houston Street apartment, and recorded for Fast Folk during this time. In 1996, Sharar moved to Cambridge, MA and became involved in New Folk movement then based in and around Boston.
In 1995, Sharar teamed up with musicians Gregg Cagno and Christian Bauman and the bands The Marys, Big Happy Crowd and The Amazing Incredibles to create the musical collective Camp Hoboken. The artists collaborated on songs and performances until 1999, and released two recordings. Sharar, Cagno, and Bauman often toured under the Camp Hoboken name, frequently with the late Rachel Bissex. Bauman later went on to become a novelist, and in interviews with National Public Radio and on Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight he said that the Camp Hoboken era was the basis for his third novel "In Hoboken" (2008) and that the character of Lou was loosely based on Sharar.
In 1997, Sharar was a co-producer of the Respond compilation, a benefit for domestic violence causes, and the compilation (including Sharar's song Any Kind of Love) and her own first album, Participate, were both released in 1998. Her second album, Any Second Street, followed in 2001. More recently she has released her third album Everyday, a collection of songs influenced by the birth of her first daughter and the death of her mother.
Linda Sharar continues to perform occasionally, and now lives in Maine.