Lee Patton

After earning his MA in the University of Denver’s Writing Program, Lee Patton developed an accidental career as a mystery novelist. He woke from a ten-year spell as an accidental playwright to concentrate on fiction and poetry. In nonfiction, he’s focused on political satire, travel and environmental reportage. Lee Patton enjoyed a free-range childhood on northern California’s Mendocino Coast, attended college in Sacramento and the Bay Area, including ed-school at San Francisco State. He fled to Colorado to teach high school writing and literature, climb the easiest 14’ers, raft the most placid whitewater, and bike the wimpiest singletrack. After earning his MA in the University of Denver’s Writing Program, he developed an accidental career as a mystery novelist. He woke from a ten-year spell as an accidental playwright to concentrate on fiction and poetry. In nonfiction, he’s focused on political satire, travel and environmental reportage. Patton has a knack for finding himself at the wrong place at the wrong time—he left Rio the day before Carnival and arrived in New Orleans the day after Mardi Gras. He crossed the Iron Curtain just after the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine, visited Vietnam during avian flu, and India right after the Mumbai terror attacks. Unreliable sources insist that he may even be responsible for the breakup of Yugoslavia, which he visited shortly before it descended into ethnic strife and civil war.