Patricia Raybon
Patricia Raybon says her father wouldn’t say no.
No, you can’t be a writer. No, you can’t climb a mountain. No, you’re a brown-skin girl in a color-struck world. So go for something safe. Something small. Something easy. Instead, her Dad bought her a typewriter. Shiny blue plastic. A Christmas surprise. Better than a Barbie. Or ice skates. Instead, she got the plastic blue Remington. That sealed it.
Lifelong Colorado resident Patricia is an award-winning author, essayist, and novelist who writes top-rated books at the daring intersection of faith and race. Her notable books include My First White Friend, her racial forgiveness memoir, which won the Christopher Award; I Told the Mountain to Move, her prayer memoir on her struggle to learn to pray, a Book of the Year Finalist in Christianity Today Magazine in 2006. Undivided: A Muslim Daughter, Her Christian Mother, Their Path to Peace, written with her younger daughter, educator Alana Raybon.
Patricia’s newest writing adventure is writing mystery series about a prim, clever, Black female theologian, solving murder and crime in Colorado’s dangerous Klan era. All That Is Secret, An Annalee Spain Mystery, releases October 2021, from Tyndale House. Patricia’s essays on faith and race have been published in the New York Times magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, USA Weekend, Guideposts, In Touch magazine (In Touch Ministries), Christianity Today, the Washington Post’s Acts of Faith and aired on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition. Patricia lives with her husband Dan, a retired educator. They love movies, gardening, and biking with their two grown daughters, a son-in-law, five
grandchildren and their “grand dog” Max.