Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a Liberian civil war survivor who immigrated to the United States with her family in 1991 during the fourteen year Liberian civil war. She is the author of four books of poetry: Where the Road Turns (Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2010), The River is Rising (Autumn House Press, 2007), Becoming Ebony, (SIU Press, Carbondale, IL 2003) and Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (New Issues Press, Kalamazoo, MI, 1998). Her poem, “One Day: Love Song for Divorced Women” was selected by US Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser as a June 13, 2011 American Life in Poetry feature. She has won several awards and grants, including the 2011 President Barack Obama Award from the Blair County NAACP, the 2010 Liberian Award for her poetry and her mentorship of young Liberians in the Diaspora, a Penn State University AESEDA Collaborative Grant for her research on Liberian Women's Trauma stories from the Civil War, a 2002 Crab Orchard Award for her second book of poems, "Becoming Ebony," a 2006 College of West Africa Alumni Association Award for Literary Excellence, an Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant from the Kalamazoo Foundation, a World Bank Fellowship, among others. Patricia has also been a featured poet/poet in residence, reading her poetry, giving talks and conducting poetry workshops at dozens of universities, grade schools and at poetry festivals in the United States, in South America and in parts of Africa. Dozens of her poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in the US, Africa, South America and in Europe. She has been a featured guest on NPR and Public TV in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan. She has also conducted featured interviews with numerous radio producers, including the BBC Radio (UK), Jamaican Radio, Liberian radio stations, among others. As a Women’s Rights Activist, Patricia has video recorded Liberian women’s stories of trauma from the civil war in several cities in the US, in Liberia and in the Buduburam Refugee Camp near Accra, Ghana, West Africa. In 2008, she was invited by the Advocates for Human Rights to testify as an expert witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC) Hearings in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a mother of four wonderful children, a wife, and an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona campus.

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