The Author

Patricia Cumbie writes fiction, essays and creative nonfiction for teens and adults. Patricia Cumbie’s short stories and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies.

Her writing has been supported by The Loft Literary Center’s Fiction Mentor Series, a SASE/Jerome Fellowship, a Loft Career Initiative Grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship. She received the Carol Bly Award for Nonfiction. She was also nominated for inclusion in Best New American Voices and was a Rona Jaffe Award finalist. Her young adult novel, Where People Like Us Live, was named one of the Cooperative Book Center’s “Choices” for their best-of YA fiction list for 2009. In 2018, she released a memoir The Shape of a Hundred Hips about sexual assault recovery through belly dance. Her recent book is a letterpress project called The Little Book of Hen: A Beginner’s Guide to Backyard Chickens, published in 2024 by Goat Back Press.