Meet the 2013 Feature Fellow, Patrick Tobin

PATRICK TOBIN – CAKE

Patrick Tobin started writing when he was ten because a local grocery store had a Thanksgiving poetry contest for kids. The creative process proved hard-there are not a lot of words that rhyme with Turkey and Pilgrim-but he managed to come in third place. When they put his poem above the deli section, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven, and thus he embarked on a lifelong quest for that elusive perfect word.

Patrick’s short stories have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Dave Eggers’ Best American Nonrequired Reading and Ohio University Press’ New Stories From The Southwest. His essays have won international writing contests and one, “Reunion,” was a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine award. This year he had an experimental nonfiction piece appear in the online version of Gulf Coast, the University of Houston’s well-regarded literary journal.

Patrick used to co-write a yoga blog with LA celebrity guru Andrea Marcum (even though he doesn’t do yoga himself)-the blog appeared on the website Elephant Journal. In the mid-90s he co-wrote a cat humor book called Petted By The Light that is currently available on Amazon for a penny.