WRITER - TEACHER - SPEAKER

Patty Ireland grew up in East Ridge, Tennessee, in a storytelling family with musical roots. At sixteen, she went on the road as a singer-songwriter, traveling the U.S. and Canada with her brother’s trio. After becoming an established BMI lyricist/composer of Country and Contemporary Christian music, Patty pursued her love of writing fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, earning an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee/Knoxville. She is now an Associate Professor of English at Pellissippi State in Knoxville and Founder/Director of the College’s renowned annual Young Creative Writer’s Workshop. Her stories, creative nonfiction and poems have appeared in Still: The Journal, 100 Days in Appalachia’s “Creators and Innovators,” Cutleaf Journal, The Re-View, Appalachia Bare, and various anthologies. She often speaks to diverse groups about creative writing and teaches writing classes for workshops and conferences.

Patty’s first novel, The Pond Girl, is forthcoming; she is currently at work on a memoir entitled East Ridge as Eden.