Award winning author Patricia McKissack comes from a family of skilled storytellers, who taught her to listen and observe and who encouraged her life-long love affair with words.  The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural was a 1993 Newbery Honor Book.  Pat also received the Coretta Scott King Award in 1993 for The Dark Thirty.  Pat wishes she could have talked to her hero, Frederick Douglass, about his rise from slavery, his daring escape, and freedom -- at last!  If she was not an author, Pat would like to be an interior designer or an architect so she could tell stories through design.

Pat frequently collaborates on books with her husband, Fredrick.  They have three sons and live in St. Louis, Missouri.