Patrice Gaines

Patrice Gaines was a newspaper reporter for 23 years, working as a reporter for The Washington Post for more than 16 years. While at the Post she wrote two books and won several prestigious awards for her journalism, including the National Black Journalists First Place Award For Commentary. She was part of a reporting team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer and was a Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Essence and the New York Times Magazine. In addition to writing for publication, her commentaries have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and NPR’s now defunct “Blues & Notes.”

As a motivational speaker, Ms. Gaines travels the country, talking at conferences, colleges, prisons and drug rehab programs, inspiring audiences with the incredible story of her own life. More recently, she has focused on prison reform and assisting formerly incarcerated people. She has co-founded a nonprofit, the Brown Angel Center, which gives a monthly workshop for women at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Jail.

She has received numerous awards for her humanitarian work. In 2009, she received a Soros Justice Media Fellowship to support the writing of a series of articles about the impact of incarceration in the Black community.

She holds writing workshops, entitled “Writing by the Water,” in which she teaches women writers on Tighlman Island, Md. and new writers--both male and female--from her home in Lake Wylie, S.C.