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Pat Montandon I never think about my writing style if, indeed, I have one.

Pat Montandon

Biography Pat Montandon was born in Texas and lived in Oklahoma as the daughter of a two ministers. At eighteen she became the tenth person in the world to undergo successful (blind surgery as it was then called) heart surgery. In her twenties Pat wrote and produced benefits for the American Heart Association.
Pat was dubbed San Francisco’s “Golden Girl” by the press and named one of the top hostesses in the United States by Esquire Magazine. She wrote How To Be A Party Girl, published by McGraw Hill, and launched a career in radio and television and became a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner.
Pat is the author of How to be a Party Girl, The Intruders, Making Friends, the first soviet-American co-publication, Celebrities and Their Angels, and Oh The Hell Of It All (Harper Collins) a memoir published April 6, 2007. The paperback A Life Beyond Imaginings: Whispers From God will be published April 6, 2008. Pat is currently working on Recipes for Conversation, based on her Roundtable salons as well as It’s Not About Your Neck, based on her seventy-nine years.
Pat founded Children as The Peacemakers, an international foundation in 1982 and has now made thirty-seven trips around the world with young children, meeting with world leaders in twenty-six countries. PBS has broadcast a documentary about her work.
This George Bernard Shaw quote sums up Pat’s philosophy. “This is the true joy of life: The being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being of a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

Upcoming Works

  • Peeing On Hot Ashes is my next book. I've changed the course of my writing, putting Recipes for Conversation on hold while I write about my childhood. Even though I've touched on my childhood in other books, there is so much colorful fodder there, that I feel I must write about it. The title, Peeing On Hot Ashes, is consuming me, and is from an actual incident when I was eight. I almost died from steam engulfing me when my pee hit the ashes, so to speak. I have been affected by that incident for the whole of my life. How did I happen to pee on hot ashes?, because I was scared of the dark and didn't want to go to the outhouse and so, decided to pee on a bucket of hot ashes my dad had left on the back porch to cool. A really bad decision.

Nickname

  • Patsy Lou

Relationship

  • Please!

Family

  • I have a son Sean Wilsey who is also a writer as is my daughter-in-law Daphne Beal. They have two children Owen Taylor, three and Mira Annapurna nine months neither of whom has written anything yet unless one counts crayon scribbles on a wall. Sean's first book, 2006 was Oh The Glory Of It All. Daphne's first The Land Of No Right Angles will be published in 2008.

Causes I Support

  • PETA, Women for Women, Amnesty International, Children as the Peacemakers, Peace to The Planet

University Affiliation

  • The University of Life! The best there is.

Agents

  • Sandra Dijkstra Literary agent

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Publishers

  • HarperCollins

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