Patricia Wood, Author
While working toward a PhD at the University of Hawaii, Patricia earned her certificate in Disability Studies. She lived aboard her sailboat ORION for twenty years and has crewed aboard sailboats transiting from Hawaii to California. She is currently lives with her architect husband, Gordon, in Waikiki. Her son, Andrew, lives in Australia.
Patricia’s debut novel Lottery was published by Putnam in the US, and has been translated into more than two dozen languages. Lottery was short-listed for the 2008 Orange Prize for fiction in the UK. In 2014 Patricia published a second novel, Cupidity.
Patricia attended Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 2010. She contributed a short story for an anthology composed of Hawaii authors, Sunset Inn Tales from the North Shore, whose proceeds benefit Hawaii Literacy.
She enjoys participating with book clubs, performs outreach with diverse audiences at schools and universities, attends the Kauai Writers Conference each year, and continues to write -- focusing on peopling her novels with those who are marginalized by society.
Patricia was born in Seattle, Washington. At nineteen she enlisted in the US Army as a medical technologist. Upon completing her service, she attended Northern Illinois University for undergraduate and graduate degrees. Throughout her life Patricia has had many careers and interests: horseback riding instructor, scuba diver, underwater photographer, sailor, shark research at Midway Atoll, teaching Marine Science to high-risk students in Honolulu, Hawaii and, through her writing, being an advocate for those who are differently abled.